Love & Pop

Love & Pop (1998) is Hideaki Anno's Japanese drama, available to watch online on iFILM. It was the first live-action feature from the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, adapted from a Ryu Murakami novel.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and three friends dabble in enjo kosai — paid dates where older men hand over cash for company. For the girls it starts as a game, easy money for clothes and small thrills. Then Hiromi spots an expensive topaz ring she can't stop thinking about, and she heads into that world alone for one long day, each meeting stranger and more unsettling than the last.

Anno shot nearly all of it on consumer camcorders rigged in odd places — inside a bottle, on a plate, down at floor level, straight from Hiromi's eyes — turning an ordinary city day into a jittery, claustrophobic stream. The result isn't a finger-wagging exposé so much as a raw portrait of late-90s consumer Tokyo through a teenager's gaze. It's worth it for the formal experiment alone, and for watching an anime director feel his way around live actors for the first time. Stream Love & Pop (1998) online on iFILM.