By Timothy Lee
Writing an essay about any of Hideaki Anno’s works is virtually impossible without mentioning his magnum opus, Neon Genesis Evangelion. I only bring this up because the first time I watched Anno’s live-action feature-length 1998 debut, Love & Pop, I couldn’t help but constantly think about Evangelion. The anime reflected Anno’s hopelessly depressed mental state at the time. It’s unclear what sort of mental state Anno was in when making Love & Pop, but the fact that this film explores very similar ideas to those that Evangelion analyzed is incredibly telling. If his depression didn’t cross over to Love & Pop, then at the very least, these concepts of loneliness, self-worth, the desire for human companionship, and fears of rejection that Anno obsessed over and have become synonymous with the Evangelion franchise certainly did.
Evangelion and Love & Pop are not the same story; last time I checked, there weren’t giant “robots” fighting giant “kaiju” in Love & Pop. Even so, these narratives are closely linked in that they are the artistic results of a creatively passionate yet heavily depressed otaku—a Japanese term for someone unhealthily obsessed with their hobbies (typically computers or manga)—who has to cope with the fact that humans are social creatures driven to acquire love and emotional connection in an increasingly isolating, dopamine-addicted, and commodified world. However, while Evangelion is a cultural phenomenon that is easily accessible, Love & Pop has fallen into such obscurity that it is almost impossible to watch it legally, at least in North America. My only way of rewatching Love & Pop with English subtitles would have been through the Internet Archive had I not still had access to a screener of the film I received last year from covering Fantasia Fest.
Yet weirdly enough, its minimal accessibility only adds to its aesthetic charm because it was famously shot using handheld digital cameras from the late 90s. Its visual presentation may appear strange and amateurish at first. However, by shooting the film this way, Anno grounds the footage to such an extent that Love & Pop feels less like a theatrical production and more like an invisible observer bought a camera, followed Hiromi around, recorded everything they saw, and then compiled all the footage into a home movie that remains in the film spools of a VHS-C cassette. Anno prioritized authenticity and genuineness when making this film, so it only makes sense that he shot it using cameras that would have been available to people like Hiromi at the time. Whether intentional or not, this guerrilla filmmaking approach caused Love & Pop to become a cinematic time capsule that captured a particular moment in 1998 and has been metaphorically buried since its Japanese premiere. Fortunately, the film distribution company GKIDS has seemingly decided that now is the right moment to unearth this time capsule because this movie was shown in select North American theaters for the first time starting from February 2025. GKIDS picked quite a moment to re-release it because, despite having premiered more than 25 years ago, Love & Pop is just as relevant today as it was back then.
The film follows Hiromi and her three female friends (Nao, Chieko, and Chisa) who participate in enjo kōsai, which roughly translates to “compensated dating.” Enjo kōsai works similarly to sugar dating in that older Japanese men pay young, attractive women for their time and company. Though these paid “dates” sometimes involve sexual activity, they can just as easily revolve around simple companionship and nothing more, such as getting food together or singing karaoke. Nonetheless, the Japanese public generally looks down on this practice, and the film doesn’t hide that Anno is a part of that camp. While Love & Pop may create a fly-on-the-wall experience, Anno doesn’t hesitate to present the men who engage in this practice in a negative light, portraying them as sleazy and creepy. It only takes 7 minutes into the movie before a random middle-aged man runs up to Hiromi and harasses her into spending time with him, offering her tea and bragging about how nice his car is.
Nevertheless, the real complexity of Love & Pop doesn’t come from asking morally black-and-white questions like whether enjo kōsai is bad. It stems from analyzing the underlying societal issues that popularized this practice in the first place. Anno explores the motivations behind the high school girls who willingly offer their services and the men who pay large sums of money for them, attempting to understand what drives both parties to engage in this morally questionable business relationship. By the film’s end, Anno arrives at the same answer he reaches in Evangelion: loneliness.
Loneliness is a powerful and overwhelming emotion that influences people to go to extreme lengths for even a morsel of love and happiness. Human beings are, after all, social animals that need interaction and cooperation with others to survive. If they can’t find or create those bonds in a natural setting, it only plunges them further into the abyss. When people reach such a low point that they feel invisible and can’t seem to find anyone they can be honest and open with, they eventually turn to short-term, unhealthy solutions that may initially scratch that itch but don’t address the overall problem. In the case of Love & Pop, the men rely on compensated dating with young girls like Hiromi to get that quick dopamine rush.
In a 2023 New York Times guest op-ed, then-US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recounts his personal experience with loneliness. He writes that it took him a year of “pain and shame” to finally overcome his struggles, which was only possible because of the love and support his wife, family, and friends gave him. He wrote, “During one of my lowest lows, the people in my life patched me up with their acts of love and connection.” I was particularly struck by this line because even though it’s such an obvious yet effective solution to the issue of loneliness, having such a supportive and loving community might not be something everyone has access to for one reason or another. Close relationships and affection are fundamental human needs, so if the men in Love & Pop can’t get that from their friends and families, they can at least have momentary companionship by paying a young, pretty girl to sit next to them and smile. Ultimately, while the men who pay for enjo kōsai are still portrayed negatively, Anno nonetheless characterizes them in a way that allows audiences to understand their motivations.
For example, the first three clients who hire Hiromi and her friends as compensated dates only do so because they simply want someone to spend time with and at least pretend to enjoy their presence. The first client pays Hiromi and Chisa 10,000 yen (or roughly $68 in 2025) each to eat shabu-shabu with him while also lecturing them about growing up and thinking about their future. The second client pays Hiromi and Nao 7,000 yen (or roughly $47.60 in 2025) each to enjoy a home-cooked meal he prepared because he has no one else to share it with. The third client pays 120,000 yen (or roughly $816 in 2025) for all four girls to sing karaoke with him and to have them each chew on a muscat grape so that he will have something to remember them by. Even the last two abhorrent and vile clients that Hiromi goes out with on her own, Uehara and Captain EO, still have that sliver of humanity that showcases their desire for the companionship that the previous clients sought.
For example, when they first meet, Uehara immediately gives Hiromi a self-deprecating speech about how his impulsivity to spit because of a neurological disease and the stench he emits from his lack of bathing are major turn-offs for women. He also mentions that people tease and harass him for his appearance and for not being able to get a girlfriend. Therefore, by hiring Hiromi as a compensated date, he can at least pretend to be a handsome man who’s capable of getting a cute girlfriend, no matter how obviously fake and inauthentic their “relationship” appears. Uehara’s mindset and actions, especially during the infamously horrifying scene in which he masturbates in the adult section of the video store while holding Hiromi’s hand, share a lot of similar parallels with modern incel behavior in terms of how he dehumanizes and sexually objectifies Hiromi. At that moment for Uehara, Hiromi is just an object of desire he uses and dominates to project his sexual frustrations and insecurities, no different from the naked women on the porno box covers he masturbates to. He desperately wants a girlfriend, or at least someone he can be affectionate with, partly out of that human desire to be seen and partly because his ego has been bruised by the constant teases and insults that were hurled at him. Unfortunately, rather than trying to become a more empathetic and appealing potential partner, he instead pays for a shortcut to overcompensate his wounded ego and attain what he wants as quickly as possible. This plan unsurprisingly falls apart as his abhorrent actions disgust Hiromi so much that she runs out of the video store in tears.
Despite this traumatic event, Hiromi takes on one final client by going on a compensated date with Captain EO, arguably one of the most fascinating characters in Love & Pop. From the moment they meet, Captain EO immediately gives off red flags as he unveils a Fuzzball Plush stuffed animal named ****ball (which is its actual name in the film) that he claims he frequently talks to while he and Hiromi walk to a love hotel. It’s interesting that this character is named Captain EO and has a Fuzzball Plush as both his name and stuffed animal are direct references to the 1986 Michael Jackson-led short film and Disney theme park attraction, Captain EO, which follows the titular character and his cat-like sidekick, Fuzzball. This seems to be a deliberate choice Anno made as it makes the character sadder yet also more insidious. The man is so erratic that Hiromi thinks, “Why can this man so easily expose his strange self talking to a stuffed animal?” The film then cuts to Hiromi’s friends giving potential answers to this question, concluding that since the two will likely never see each other again, Captain EO, and to an extent Hiromi, can be their most authentic selves. The film confirms this hypothesis because Captain EO then reveals that he’s had ****ball for over 10 years, as it was the first and only gift his father bought for him before his parents divorced. When the two arrive at the love hotel, Captain EO confesses that he chose Hiromi because she’s the type of girl he can open up to. He especially becomes touched when Hiromi fixes ****ball after discovering its tail had come off. These lines and moments highlight what Captain EO truly wants, and it isn’t a girlfriend or even sex; it’s someone he can open up to and bond with.
Unfortunately, like with Uehara, Captain EO can’t help himself and squanders his opportunity. Whatever spark Captain EO and Hiromi might have had, however artificial or transactional, is instantly snuffed out when the man assaults, restrains, and threatens Hiromi with a taser and sexual assault. I was terrified the first time I watched this scene, but I also couldn’t help but linger on the monologue that Captain EO delivers while physically restraining Hiromi:
“You’re not supposed to be here. Some guy you don’t even know. How can you be naked like this? Everyone’s got someone who needs them. Don’t they? Maybe that someone’s heart is breaking. Maybe that someone is half dead with suffering, ready to cry. How do you think they’d feel to know the girl so important to them was naked before some strange man? How do you think they’d feel? You don’t know a thing. Do you think no one would care to see you like this? Huh? You’re here, naked… and you’re killing someone half dead with grief over it.”
This monologue stuck with me even after I finished the film because, on top of being masterfully written and delivered, it was at this violent and terrifying moment that Captain EO was the most honest both to Hiromi and himself. This is an unhinged man who is so insecure about his emotional vulnerability that he lashes out at a girl who, at best, was nothing but kind and patient with him, and at worst, was simply just doing her job. This is also a man who is so fundamentally broken that the only way he can reciprocate simple and gentle acts of kindness is with violent outbursts and threats. What’s particularly striking about this monologue is what is being said between the lines; he sees so much value in Hiromi and recognizes that she’s important to someone who’d be heartbroken to find her in this state with a maniacal loser like Captain EO. His unhinged actions are the result of extreme self-hatred, a concept that is also thoroughly examined in Evangelion and The End of Evangelion. Whether intentional or not, Anno created a scene that artistically and masterfully connects to a prevalent modern issue: the intersection between toxic masculinity and solitude.
In an LA Times Voices piece, former columnist Jean Guerrero remarks that one of the biggest reasons why young men have specifically been affected by the loneliness epidemic is that they often are faced with the stigma that they will receive punishment and ridicule if they express their emotions. Therefore, young men are often forced to push these feelings down and “man up,” which only causes them to wallow further in their isolation and pain, preventing them from creating any meaningful relationships. Guerrero points out that it’s no wonder these lonesome young men are more likely to be radicalized into far-right extremism and look up to misogynistic figures like Andrew Tate. They become addicted to and fully embrace podcasts and influencers espousing toxic masculinity and “anti-woke” messages because these are some of the only places that allow them to be seen and heard. “Nearly half of American men say their online lives are more rewarding than their offline lives,” according to Guerrero, and if Love & Pop took place today, there’s a possibility Captain EO would have also been stuck in the manosphere—his struggles only acknowledged by those who seek to exploit his pain, and the pain of many others like him, for clout.
The men aren’t the only victims of loneliness in Love & Pop, as Anno explores how it also affects women, specifically Hiromi. At first glance, the women in the film don’t appear to have the same issues with isolation that their male clients struggle with. Throughout the film, Hiromi is seen with a wide smile whenever she spends time with her friends or meets up with someone who hires her as a compensated date. She and her friends enjoy each other’s company as they spend time eating at cafes and restaurants, having sleepovers at each other’s houses, and shopping for swimsuits they can wear for an upcoming trip to the beach. They appear perfectly content with their lives, so perhaps they only engage in enjo kōsai because it’s a quick and easy way to earn lots of money to buy expensive items that will make them even happier, like going to the salon. For example, Hiromi only goes out with the last 3 clients in the film because she desperately wants to buy a topaz ring that she comes across while she and her friends shop for swimsuits.
Yet despite how outwardly happy Hiromi may appear, all of this laughter and consumerism are just facades to cover up her crippling fears and insecurities of being alone, unloved, and losing everything she holds dear. Hiromi is stuck in the middle of a metaphorical tug-of-war between struggling to open up to anyone about her feelings while also desperately doing everything she can to get rid of these said emotions she won’t publicly acknowledge. Near the film’s beginning, Hiromi delivers an inner monologue explaining that she takes so many pictures because she desperately wants to preserve the present before everything she holds dear suddenly changes or disappears. She’s afraid of losing her friends to time and witnessing all the good parts of her life come to an end. While she acknowledges that perhaps “…the world is just the same stuff, over and over,” she wants to cling to her present as much as possible before the cycle restarts.
I didn’t think much when I first watched this scene. I just assumed Hiromi was experiencing a type of anxiety some teenagers have about change, growing up, and moving on from high school, as I had similar thoughts when I was her age. However, my perspective on this moment completely changed when, later in the film, Hiromi delivers another inner monologue:
“Rather, my heart and body get unusually cold. A feeling of being left behind alone. And when talking to your girlfriends don’t do anything to fill that gap. That’s when I feel an urge to be in my boyfriend’s arms. More than having sex, I just want to quietly cuddle together. I have a stronger wish to have our skin touch and feel each other’s warmth. That is sexual desire to me.”
After experiencing this moment during my first watch, I immediately recontextualized Hirmoi’s earlier monologue about using photography to preserve all the beauty and joy she deeply values in the moment. She’s not scared of losing her friends and everything else good in her life because she’s going through a phase of teen anxiety or angst. She has these feelings because they stem from what truly terrorizes her, and that’s trying to find someone that she can be vulnerable and intimate with, only to discover that the people she wants that kind of relationship with are either nowhere to be found or completely reject her. Interestingly, Shinji, the protagonist from Evangelion, shares this same fear that Hiromi has. She longs for a deep and meaningful connection aside from surface-level smiles and polite gestures, but that’s all she seems to get, no matter how hard she tries.
For example, Hiromi’s parents are so focused on their hobbies and activities (the dad builds his model train set while the mom participates in a swimming competition) that they barely give her any attention and are completely oblivious of her enjo kōsai activities. Even at the film’s end and after all the trauma that she suffered, Hiromi’s parents don’t even remotely pick up that something terrible might have happened to their daughter. Similarly, Hiromi’s boyfriend, who is only mentioned briefly, is never there to fulfill her desire to cuddle or have their skin touch. She mentions to Chieko that she plans on breaking up with her boyfriend because, on top of the fact that she says he only seems to want her for physical and sexual reasons, he’s never there when she needs him the most. However, Hiromi never actually breaks up with her boyfriend or even brings up this idea again throughout the rest of the film. Granted, this movie takes place within a short time frame, and Hiromi deals with much more pressing issues within it, but the fact that she only mentions this breakup idea once might be a hint that she wasn’t actually going to do it. After Hiromi runs out of the video store to escape Uehara, she tries calling someone and asks, “Why won’t you answer?” after no one picks up. Hiromi never states who she’s calling, but considering Hiromi’s first inner monologue about sexual desire, perhaps she’s calling her boyfriend to get the comfort she desperately needs at that moment.
However, the people who arguably break Hiromi’s heart the most are the ones who reject her pleas for emotional connection instead of ignoring them: her friends. This is especially ironic because while the film doesn’t go as in-depth into the internal psychology of Hiromi’s friends, it’s inferred that the other girls put on acts that are equally inauthentic and phony as the one Hiromi plays to push down their depression and emptiness. For example, in the same scene where Hiromi tells Cheiko that she might break up with her boyfriend, she internally criticizes Cheiko for pretending to be more mature and adult than she is, stating, “Just because you really are in love with a divorced guy or can go on sugar dating alone does not make you an adult.” Cheiko acts cool and laid-back as if nothing bothers her and brags about the number of clients she’s made money off of through enjo kōsai and the sexual experiences she’s had with them. Nonetheless, it becomes apparent that this is all just a facade because later in the film, she breaks down after revealing that one of her clients broke up with her after discovering she’s a junior in high school. Chisa puts on a similar brave face when she tells her friends that she got picked up by a talent agency a while back and plans on dropping out of school to become a professional dancer. She acknowledges that she still attends school solely to spend time with her friends, but this is as far as her candor goes. This might be the last time Chisa ever sees her friends, and rather than opening up and talking about this scary reality, everyone brushes it off and immediately moves on to the next topic, never to bring it up again.
For a group of girls who claim to be close friends, these characters are surprisingly closed off from each other, and this is clearly by design. As Hiromi explains right after Cheiko cries from her “break-up,” “The four of us aren’t friends because we talk about everything. We’re friends cause we don’t ask questions we don’t want to answer or keep quiet when others expect an answer.” Their friendship is built on what’s convenient and easy, not what’s real and truthful. This is only further cemented in the scene where Cheiko, Noa, and Chisa try to give their earnings to Hiromi so she can buy her ring, but she refuses. When they ask why she wants to split the money four ways, she cries and tells them how much they mean to her. Hiromi can’t articulate her feelings, but she doesn’t need to, as the other three seem to understand what she’s trying to communicate. This touching moment should have led to further scenes where the four girls gradually become more open with each other, but instead, the friends go their separate ways and are never together again until the very last scene.
Anno uses these heartbreaking scenes with Hiromi and her friends to showcase that isolation is a silent and deadly force that can affect anyone and everyone. Unfortunately, this is still the case today, because while the loneliness epidemic is often associated with men, recent studies have shown there are just as many, if not more, female victims. For example, according to a Vox piece by Allie Volpe, a report by Northwestern University associate professor Eileen Graham “…found women tend to report higher levels of loneliness than men.” A piece from Campaign to End Loneliness, a website hosted by Sheffield Hallam University, reported similar findings that “Women are significantly more likely to be chronically lonely than men. 6.33% of men are chronically lonely while 7.67% of women are chronically lonely.” Perhaps this is why Hiromi and her friends engage in enjo kōsai because if they’re not going to get the love and intimate companionship they crave from each other or their loved ones, then they at least can get it from customers who are also looking for that same connection. This is especially the case in the scene where Hiromi goes on a compensated date with Captain EO, a total stranger whom she’ll likely never see again, because their conversation in the love hotel has more honesty and emotional vulnerability than the ones Hiromi had with her friends or parents.
It’s fascinating that so many characters in this film and so many real people participated or engaged in enjo kōsai, as it exemplifies just how prevalent an issue loneliness was back in the 90s, mirroring our current struggles with this issue. At the same time, and taking ethics aside, it’s always puzzled me that so many people in Japan would use enjo kōsai as their main tool to combat isolation, because while technically all parties involved receive some benefit, it ultimately doesn’t achieve its primary function. At best, it only creates the illusion of both parties being satisfied until everyone inevitably rushes back for one reason or another, creating a cyclical loop. At worst, it constantly puts young girls in dangerous and uncomfortable situations whenever they deal with the Ueharas and Captain EOs of the world, who will likely take advantage of or exploit them. Granted, enjo kōsai was never meant to be a long-term solution, just a quick fix-up that eventually received so much national attention that the government was forced to pass laws to regulate and crack down on it. However, it’s important to note that Japan made efforts to curb enjo kōsai, but not the underlying issue of loneliness that caused it to become so widespread in the first place.
Loneliness is still an issue that the Japanese government is attempting to resolve today, especially in a post-COVID world. It’s become so prevalent that a new cabinet position called the Minister of Loneliness was created in 2021. Even if it can be assumed that enjo kōsai is no longer as widespread as it was in the late 90s, it has since only been replaced by newer, legal, and more popular methods. One of those prevalent methods is rental services that allow clients to hire actors to play their girlfriend, boyfriend, parent(s), family members, or any other significant other. The reasons behind using these services can range anywhere from needing a companion for an important social event like a wedding or a funeral to something as simple as wanting someone to spend time with and temporarily escape their social isolation for a few hours. While this practice is seen much more favorably by the Japanese public and has more professional safety standards that protect the service providers than enjo kōsai, this is just another temporary fix to a greater loneliness issue that needs large-scale, long-term, and meaningful initiatives to address.
Hiring someone to be a girlfriend or boyfriend doesn’t tackle the fundamental problems that have caused social isolation to become so rampant in Japan, such as the current working and school culture, the aging population, the decrease in birth rates, and the rising number of cases of hikikomori (known as severe social withdrawal). If anything, these rental services just commodify relationships and reinforce people’s seclusion like enjo kōsai did, except without the underage sexual nature. This practice isn’t even exclusive to Japan, as it has spread to other countries like South Korea, China, France, and even the US, as the site RentAFriend.com has a similar function. Even taking aside this rental service and examining the world as a whole, there are still various sites and platforms that only provide temporary happiness and fulfillment but afterwards remind people just how alone they are. Whether they are sexual platforms like OnlyFans and dating apps or more general outlets like social media and Twitch streamers, these very rarely create the intimate, emotionally vulnerable, and real relationships that we as social animals desperately crave.
Like with what he did with the Evangelion franchise, Anno uses Love & Pop to artistically communicate to his audience just how valuable love, companionship, and intimacy are. They are absolute necessities that make us human, and life wouldn’t be worth living without them. At the same time, Anno doesn’t sugarcoat just how difficult or frightening it is to attain these human essentials, as we need to be emotionally vulnerable with each other and accept the risk of rejection. Some people might pour their heart and soul out, only to be left by the wayside because the recipient of that love doesn’t reciprocate. Some people will experience prolonged dark moments in their lives before seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Yet despite all these hardships and obstacles, Anno stresses that we need to at least try. We need to be able to pick ourselves up and keep putting ourselves out there until we eventually find that right person. If we stubbornly remain emotionally closed off and don’t even attempt to open ourselves up, then nothing will ever change for us. A person can have all the money in the world to purchase all the compensated dates or rental girlfriends/boyfriends they could want, but none of that excess will fill the holes in their hearts. There are no shortcuts to developing real human connections, so the least we can do is follow Anno’s advice and go engage with the world and experience real life with other people.
