The phrase "choose who you want to be" may seem like a joke to teenagers.
From the perspective of "adults", these children childishly only know how to calculate each other, but they also know more maturely than more adults: the world is beautiful, but it is also cruel.
In the movie "The Story of Youth", for the "children" who are gradually falling into such a reality, it is precisely because they have seen the sun, the sea, and the upright people that they can endure or cannot tolerate the darkness, the mud and despair. However, they have no right to refuse this world in which there are two sides of the same coin. The young mind cannot keep up with the rapidly growing flesh, let alone the turbulent society.
With the economic bubble in the early 1990s, Japan's economy regressed, and then entered the Great Depression of the Heisei economy, which was a "lost decade". The 1950s and 1970s were a period of high economic growth and confidence in Japan, when people sang day and night, unaware that as desire expanded, society also ushered in an explosion:
The first post-war change of power in 1993 was not only the first change of power since the long-term 55-year japan system (may-five-year system), but also the beginning of a split between the conservative camp and identity; as shown in the Murayama Talk in 1995, the conservative camp originally attached importance to Japanese civilization and tradition as its banner, but in 1991, after the end of the Cold War, it was forced to admit Japan's war mistakes.
So the whole of Japan fell into confusion, is it a criminal who started the war, or a hero who defends itself? The problem of Japan's long lack of subjectivity after the war has been internalized into the confusion of the past, the future and the present in the minds of individual people. Bullying, intercourse, rape, and suicide in the movie were all too familiar to Japan at that time.
There was even a society where random homicides occurred, including the 1995 Sarin Incident in the Tokyo Subway. Although neither the original novel nor the film depicts the social atmosphere in Japan at that time, it is still possible to know a little bit from the plot: family estrangement, crimes committed by teenagers and young girls, school bullying, and passers-by with huge sums of money.
And in the midst of such chaos, only her voice is redemption.
The original title is "All About Lily Week", which is actually everything that pursues her youth. He is not the only one who sees Lily as a savior, but he is the only one who faces this life called "Tsusaka/Hayami Yuichi". Stealing is a precious ritual between him and Lily Chow, "I want something that is truly 'mine'". Something that will not be touched by anyone, that belongs to me alone." With this desire, the teenager also became the moderator of the fan site, and only then could he be him. As Lily Chow sings:
“To another place To be away from all， To be one， Of everything”
In the movie, the picture of the teenager bullying the teenager may be too real and false for some viewers. However, just as teenagers can look excitedly when they travel to the island, and their eyes can panic and cry, the shaking picture may be the world they see.
The real meaning is that it is an ineffable thing to half the world's people. If you know that you will not be believed, why risk becoming a false "victim" in the eyes of the world? So such a dissatisfaction and helplessness with nowhere to vent and lack of expression form a tension when watching the film, and the viewer feels depressed but still curious: If youth is incomprehensible, then what is worth believing.
If you have to make a choice in the process of becoming an adult, who is qualified to choose? The rise of the Internet at the end of the 20th century revealed the fate of lonely young people who were warming on it from then to that time. Whether it is Green Cat or Philia, all the users who think they are familiar with the truth are also far from the truth.
Because of his young flesh, Fang Gang; however, the righteous words in the virtual space are nothing more than empty words in front of the fists of reality. In particular, the protagonist Yuichi gradually watched the fall of his "former friend" Hoshino, the departure of "non-ordinary comrade-in-arms" Tsuda, and the self-abandonment of the "crush" Kuno, and he must have wondered in his heart: When he grows up, will he be qualified to choose?
To be the sky, to become the sea, or to be a melody, it was never at your own disposal. The reason why youth is cruel lies in its short-lived splendor and poignant irrevocability; it seems that we who have become adults can only silently walk out of the cinema and return to "daily normal" again.
Therefore, it can be said that "Youth Electric Illusion" is a cruel farewell to youth movies, so that teenagers are forced to grow up and redefine the real world. Although the film was a work from an early time ago, when I look back on it now, it is still deeply touching.
Of course, among them, the only thing we have to resonate is the word youth. Even if it is a different social environment, everyone will always experience a painful youth in the process of growing up, and then suddenly grow into an adult. It seems to be running away from yourself, but in fact, you are also looking for a new self.
The film, which oscillates between the virtual and the real, reinterprets the "pain" of youth from the perspective of youth.