It’s rare to come across a film title with a bilingual near-homophone that says something so telling about its protagonist — in this case, Daigo Matsui’s “Meets the World,” about a 27-year-old woman who is a fan of a yaoi (gay romance) manga.
Based on Hitomi Kanehara’s novel, the dark comic drama follows Hana Sugisaki’s nerdy Yukari as she is guided out of her shell by Rai (Kotona Minami), a cool-eyed club hostess with an unshakable death wish who draws her naive new friend into her night life milieu. All the while, Yukari is a hardcore fan of Korean barbecue as well as devoted to the comic “Meat Is Mine,” whose characters are yakiniku (grilled meat) menu items that transform into handsome gay men. Her world thus revolves around meat in both her fantasy and real life, which in Sugisaki’s finely layered turn is both funny and strange, lovable and sad.
Yukari and Rai’s meet-cute occurs in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s notorious red-light district, where Rai finds Yukari passed-out drunk and asks if she is OK. Yukari tells Rai she is beautiful and says she wishes she could be her. Rai’s matter-of-fact reply: You can — for ¥3 million.
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