AllMovie

Takayoshi Yamaguchi directs this Gen-X drama about loves and life. Minoru (Hironori Hirabayashi) is a 25-year-old who is unhappily employed as a manga editor. He is also has been dating unemployed office worker Kyoko (Satoko Abe) for over two years, and the relationship seems to be at a turning point -- either they should break up or they should get married. Both feel like something is lacking in their lives. Things start to change for Minoru when he is assigned to edit a notoriously difficult manga artist named Emi, whose previous editors all had nervous breakdowns. Her assistant is also her sister, Yumi (Keiko Sugano), who is cuter and gutsier than straight-laced Kyoko. After a particularly unsuccessful meeting with Emi, Minoru and Yumi kiss on the drive home. When an artist named Fumiko (Tsubame Mita), who works at the place where Kyoko models part-time, asks her to borrow Minoru's car for a roadtrip to Hokkaido, she reluctantly agrees. Her anxieties are not assuaged when she learns that Fumiko cannot drive a manual transmission. At the same time, she gets invited to go to Brazil with her cousin from Osaka. Thinking that this might snap the two out of their torpor, she asks Minoru to come along. He is strangely uninterested in the idea. Later, Kyoko learns that not only did Fumiko not return with the car -- she abandoned it in a snow bank -- but she is not even particularly sorry for the matter.