Japan's toxic prophets are revealed in 'Yokokuhan' adaptation

Directors of the better Japanese commercial films typically carve out thematic or stylistic niches for themselves, so that even if they do a manga adaptation for the masses, it's their kind of manga filmed in their kind of way. One is Yoshihiro Nakamura, a master of mysteries and thrillers with brainteaser plots who is fascinated by the strangeness of the universe and the dualities of human existence.

How can a punk rock song recorded in 1974 save the world ("Fish Story")? How can a mousy office worker become a diabolical murderer, at least in the eyes of the mass media ("Shirayuki Hime Satsujin Jiken" aka "The Snow White Murder Case")? His answers may surprise you.

This is also true of his latest thriller, "Yokokuhan" ("Prophecy"), a film based on Tetsuya Tsutsui's 2011-13 manga series about a nerdy former IT company employee who forms an underground group that rights society's wrongs with criminal acts.

As the film begins, a police cybercrime unit, led by the gorgeous, brilliant Inspector Yoshino (Erika Toda), scrambles to nail the mysterious online activist Shinbunshi (Toma Ikuta), who wears a mask fashioned from newsprint (aka shinbunshi, the origin of his nom de guerre) and records online video "prophecies" of crimes that later come true.

The victims of these crimes, however, are more or less getting what's coming to them: the food company that negligently poisons its customers and finds its factory torched; the snarky college kid who tweets that a girl who was raped on his campus was "asking for it" is later hogtied and humiliatingly violated.

It soon becomes apparent that Shinbunshi is not acting alone. We find out early on that the above-mentioned IT worker — nicknamed Gates (a reference to the Microsoft founder) — administers his rough justice with three confederates: the rugged, good-natured Kansai (Ryohei Suzuki), the porky, goofy Metabo (YosiYosi Arakawa) and the bespectacled, terminally shy Nobita (Gaku Hamada). Also, all four members of the group wear newsprint masks, so they are all collectively "Shinbunshi."

In a flashback, we see that all four began as youthful losers in today's winner-take-all society, doing the dirty, dangerous job of recycling toxic waste. Then an outrage committed by their exploitative employer sets their anger aflame — and Shinbunshi is born.

This is a thriller set-up, and box-office logic dictates filming it as entertainment, with only a sprinkling of socio-political commentary. "Prophecy" doesn't entirely flout this logic — the early scenes unspool with a fizzy blackly comic energy, fueled by social media commentary on Shinbunshi's every move. But the film soon turns in the direction of gritty realism, with depictions of life at the bottom that wouldn't be out of place in a documentary expose.

This is a risky strategy and Nakamura, working with scriptwriter and frequent collaborator Tamio Hayashi, doesn't entirely avoid the pitfalls of preachiness and sentimentality. Also, the variations in visual tone can be distracting, with some scenes looking like grainy VHS tapes recorded from an old analog TV.

But Nakamura also proves his brilliance as a storyteller — especially in a chase sequence that involves a desperate Gates and a dogged Yoshino. The pursuit goes on far longer than the norm and pays off in unexpected ways, as two outsiders connect across a social chasm.

By the climax, the heroes are no longer innocent victims or stainless Robin Hoods. Gates' evolution, ably portrayed by the versatile Ikuta, is the most striking of all, though his final act as Shinbunshi leader is debatable — to put it as ambiguously as possible.

I can argue with that act while admitting that the central question "Prophecy" raises is the right one: What kind of society do we want? One in which the Shinbunshis are discarded or one that gives them a chance to recycle their lives?