Bright Future (Akarui mirai) (NR)

synopsis

A drama centering upon the friendship between Yuji and Mamoru, two angry young men working in a plant that processes oshibori--the wet hand towels found in restaurants and fast food joints. Both are anti-social loners with short fuses. Yuji worships the older, enigmatic Mamoru, who lives with a red jellyfish that is hauntingly luminous and fatally poisonous. Mamoru shows him how to care for the creature, which swims alone in its tank, waving its tentacles with deceptive gentleness. When Mamoru and Yuji's irritatingly self-absorbed boss visits Mamoru's apartment and playfully sticks his hand in the tank, Mamoru does not warn him that the fish is deadly. When the boss learns that the fish could have killed him, he fires Mamoru on the spot. Enraged at this treatment of his friend, Yuji grabs a metal pipe and storms over to the boss' house with lethal intent. He finds, however, that Mamoru has been there first--and has left two bodies in his wake.