It's the strongest of my five Daisuke Yamanouchi hostess club films this week. Or should I say "most horrifying"? The film also doesn't spend much time in the hostess club itself, because it's as interested in male hosts as in female hostesses. (The abhorrent, parasitic male host we meet is Kaito, played by Shun Yuki, and no fate could have been bad enough for him.)

It's about two childhood friends, Hatsuki (Yuna Ogura) and Reona (Noa Eikawa). We see them four years ago in flashback, when they were happy schoolgirls. Later life wasn't kind to them, although their romantic choices didn't help. Hatsuki's been shagging a married man for three years and gives him a cold, dead stare when he's about to return to his wife again. As for Reona, she's chosen Kaito. That's basically self-harm. He's like a plague bacillus in (pretty) human form. We're introduced to him saying "Reona, do you love me?" as she weakly mutters "yes" while kneeling with blood trickling from her nose. He yells at her for replying too quietly, then berates her for not becoming number one at the hostess club. He implies that this is a moral failure on her part and that she failed because she's only thinking of herself. (Doesn't he know how viciously some of these girls compete for status? It's not "dog eat dog" so much as "barracuda eat shark".)

Kaito pushes Reona into prostitution, but she gets fired from that too. There's yet more domestic violence. She's on the point of suicide, while he's shagging other women and telling them the same lies. The last straw is his reaction on learning that Reona's pregnant with his child.

It's misery taken so far that it becomes horror. Afterwards, Hatsuki reflects on a time when Reona asked for help and Hatsuki ignored her. Ouch. Well, too late now. Then, a few scenes later, Hatsuki's started working as a hostess.

This film has a happy-ish ending... but in a dark way that caps off a film that had seemed to be bound for hell. That's "happy" in the sense of "having someone evil snatched off the streets by your yakuza boyfriend's thugs so that you can do something disgusting". (I was disappointed that this vengeance wasn't fatal, but the sequel to this made my jaw drop.) There's also self-mutilation. On the upside, though, this film explains why the yakuza Hiraiwa (Hirokio Andou) was married three years later in True Invisible Pervert 2: Women at the Mercy of the Devil's Perfume. Look at the names. They line up. (Watching all these Daisuke Yamanouchi films out of order is like assembling a jigsaw of unexpected references. It's not a single shared universe, but he has multiple ongoing series and sometimes they cross over. Confusingly, though, he often reuses the same actors in different roles. In addition, there are odd naming echoes like Yamanouchi repeatedly casting Youta Kawase as someone whose name is Yoshii, Yoshikawa or Yoshioka. Some of those are indeed recurring characters, though.)

Random observation: Yuna Ogura usually makes porn, but she's also in the live-action movie of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead.

What's this film about? I'm tempted to say "evil", or questionable life choices. Both Hazuki and Reona explore dodgy employment routes and attract terrifyingly unsuitable men. The difference between them is that Reona's on a downward slope and will be destroyed by her misery. Hazuki, on the other hand, starts the film in a dead-end relationship but thereafter is in control of her choices. That doesn't mean they're good, but at least she owns them and at the end seems happy with her deal with the devil. (Even Kaito, of all people, seems joyful for the first time after his, er, forced reinvention and had always looked sullen when he was evil. Mind you, that final smile might be just professional.)

It's shocking stuff. Definitely recommended. Just don't expect to spend much time in hostess clubs.