Monster (2023)

Whilst watching i felt like Monster(2023) reminded me a lot of Ningen Shikkaku(1994) and shared many similar elements, for instance:

- Multiple perspectives
- School Bullying
- Strange/psychotic teachers
- Dysfunctional families
- Bully befriending victim
- Parents trying to seek justice for their children
- LGBTQ relationship between male students
- Brutal and depressing

Another story that is told through the perspective of different characters. Many misunderstandings and lies are revealed as the story unfolds, to finally show what really happened.

Child Lead with elements including child abuse. Both films are sad and realistic with the setting as well as the melancholic tone.

Non-linear timeline. You watch the same story from different people's perspective, and only after watching it all, you get to understand how the different puzzles fit together.

“Rashomon” is the most famous film to tell the same story from multiple perspectives. Though “Monster” is closer in its cynicism and absence of a conclusive answer to the source short stories “Rashômon” and “In a Grove” by Akutagawa Ryûnosuke.

It deals with queer teens navigating their lives with their newly discovered feelings, and their struggles interacting with the world, and their journey to self acceptance. 'I go to school not by bus' is a short film though with a way less budget, but it covers similar themes. Watching 'Monster' now made me remember it, even though I watched it more than five years ago.

Unlike Monster, Chul Soo is just a short movie with a low budget but both movies are about developing romantic feelings for somebody of the same gender during early teenage years and the pain it can cause to the involved.

Both titles come from Japan and deal with the theme of (early) teenage love between two people of the same gender in a conservative society and the tragic consequences it can have.

Another movie that tells the perspective of different characters. There are 3 storyline in Anger (2016). Both movies reminds viewers to not be too quick to condemn anyone without knowing the whole story.

I think they are similar because :

-both j-BL
-both takes place (also) in school
-In both oe of the main lead have an abusive father
-lgbt child