About The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (2017)

Yuya Ishii’s emotionally swirling 2017 film The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue is an awe-inspiring film that touches upon subjects such as urban alienation, estrangement, loneliness, isolation, and meaninglessness with an inexplicit adolescent love story at the top. Set in 21st-century Tokyo, Japan, the plot is entangled within the lives of two characters—Mika and Shinji—and their serendipitous, unpremeditated, and inevitable incidents of encounters. Moreover, the primary message of the film to be conveyed, which is previously mentioned, is piped through the lives and life experiences of Mika and Shinji.

Both characters have emotional difficulties, as well as Shinji having a physical deficiency. Mika, who works as a nurse and a “girlie bar” attendee, is quite emotionally drawn from all things which require the attention of sentimentality and emotional sensitivity. She is overly productive at evading love, and not even believing in the notion, as well as desensitized to the grim subject of death—which is oftentimes her go-to topic in her daily interactions. Mika is painfully observant and cognizant of the deteriorating state of humanity in the highly developed and technological capital of Japan, remarking that “[T]he moment you love the big city, it’s like you’ve killed yourself.” Her assertation aligns with the general mood of the film, in which people are utilized like cogs in a wheel and most bystanders are so busy looking up to their phones that they are missing out on what is actually happening at the moment, i.e. the occasional passing of the airship.

Shinji, on the other hand, works in a construction and is utterly blind in his left eye, seeing only “half” of the world. Shinji is without reservation self-aware of his physical defect, which results in him developing anxiety and a reserved and withdrawn personality. Among the two, Shinji is depicted as less philosophical—not intending to remark that he is downright foolish or incapable—perhaps mostly due to the conditions of his occupation: a physically challenging and tiring job might not leave him enough time to contemplate the bigger issues of reality and present-day society.

Even through their emotional and physical malfunctions, as well as their incompatibility on paper, the big, colossal, and indifferent city of Tokyo ensures that Mika and Shinji always encounter one another. The pair also becomes gradually aware of the situation and their meetings multiply therefore. However, their interactions are quite dissimilar to that of conventional serendipitous love stories, they keep running in circles in order to avoid the affair of love being procreated. Crushed and disturbed by their pasts, traumas, and struggles, Mika and Shinji are utterly mistrustful pertaining to love. Occasionally they question the budding seeds of love (?) among one another and their ending is not explicit to the audience.

Ishii’s disturbingly realistic and emotionally exploitative The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (2017) brilliantly enlightens the 21st-century Tokyo experience through his two characters Mika and Shinji. The two are utilized in the goal of achieving the representation of banality, meaninglessness, and mundanity in a populated urban space where everyone is practically the same person. Nothing heroic, valiant, or adventurous takes place in urban spaces, only the most real and boring incidents emerge from such places of existence.