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Manji
Movie

Manji

1983 • Unknown

Woke Score
7
out of 10

Plot

Kleptomaniac Sonoko and young, beautiful Mitsuko begin an unusual love affair which develops fast into a kinky sexual love triangle when Sonoko’s husband gets involved.

Overall Series Review

The film details the complete moral and psychological breakdown of a middle-class Japanese housewife who seeks escape from her mundane life through an illicit and volatile lesbian affair. The narrative focuses intensely on the complex, destructive emotional web that forms between the two women and the husband who is reluctantly pulled into their kinky sexual triangle. The story is a deep dive into human obsession, manipulation, and the intoxicating yet ruinous nature of passion. The film portrays the complete subjectivity of morality and passion's power to destroy all traditional structures. The complex, flawed female leads drive the entire action.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The film focuses on personal and psychological drama, not on race or the vilification of whiteness. Characters are judged by their problematic, obsessive actions and flaws, reflecting universal human desire and manipulation, not by an intersectional hierarchy.

Oikophobia7/10

The protagonist, a married housewife, views her seemingly tranquil marriage and middle-class existence as a source of "profound psychological oppression." She turns to dangerous, illicit acts to "regain a sense of existence." This frames the domestic institution of the Japanese home and marriage as fundamentally corrupting and suffocating.

Feminism7/10

The core of the plot involves the protagonist escaping the restrictive, traditional role of a housewife by prioritizing sexual and emotional fulfillment outside the family structure. The narrative empowers the female characters by giving them all emotional and sexual agency, while the husband is a secondary figure drawn into their complex, manipulative dynamic.

LGBTQ+9/10

The narrative is centered entirely on the lesbian love affair, which quickly escalates into a destructive, kinky sexual love triangle that wholly deconstructs the traditional nuclear family. The alternative sexuality and non-normative relationships are the absolute foundation and driving force of the plot.

Anti-Theism8/10

The film exists in an "emotionally ambiguous maze filled with moral complexities," where human passion and destructive obsession dictate all actions. The plot portrays a world where morality is entirely subjective and dependent on shifting emotional and power dynamics, acknowledging no objective truth or higher moral law.