Nameless

Is it unreasonable to ask a stranger if one might pray for them? Opinions will likely differ. In most cases it is probably well intentioned. It might be deeply felt, and if the two parties happen to share the same religion – not a given a Japan – then it could indicate welcome community support. Many people feel irritated or imposed upon by it, however, and if you don’t get that when you first start watching Nameless, you will by the end.

Screened as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, Hideo Jōjō’s adaptation of Jirō Satō and Ryo Nagata’s manga mixes elements of horror, mystery and character study. At its core is something like a folk tale, albeit with religious associations, but it is also deeply concerned with loneliness, class and social exclusion. Beginning with a brutal massacre in a café, it looks into the possible reasons – though never excuses – for outbreaks of apparently senseless violence, and at the price paid by individuals for wider social failings.

Toro and Hanako are the names given to two lost, nameless children found by a police officer 38 years before the said massacre. The girl happily accepts hers, associated with beauty and flowers. The boy never acknowledges his. This seems like part of his general reluctance to engage. The officer gives him space. He has something to put down in his paperwork, and he’s more concerned with helping the children to recover from whatever traumas they have experienced. He introduces them to his own son, Kunieda, takes them on a trip to the zoo, and encourages them to engage with other children at a playgroup. He’s puzzled as to why Toro keeps his right arm strapped to his body with bits of wire and string, covered by a coat, but doesn’t push. If there comes a point when he figures out the reason, by then it is too late.

At the centre of this story is a curse or supernatural state of being which is not simply physical but relates to the Shinto concept of kotodama, the connection between the soul (possessed by very object as well as every living thing) and its true name. As in European folklore, to know a thing’s true name is to have power over it, but here that applies whether one wants that power or not. Is Toro a kind of yokai? Is he an instrument of some greater spirit or deity? (Are we denied this understanding because don’t know is true name?) Growing up in the Christian tradition, he hopes at first that God will cure him of his difference, with that pleading gradually giving way to rage.

We don’t see the middle period of Toro’s life; nor do we see that of Hanako, seemingly an ordinary abandoned child, who stays at his side; nor Kunieda, whom we catch up with when he is a senior police detective (played by Kuranosuki Sasaki), looking into the aforementioned massacre. His realisation that what he is looking at is the same phenomenon he encountered in childhood sets off a supernaturally-informed investigation in parallel to the official one. He is not merely a foil but a point of comparison for the adult Toro (played by co-writer Jirō Satō), also damaged but privileged to have grown up without a disability in a society which accepted and made room for him.

Although the film is quite tightly plotted, with the police racing to catch Toro before he strikes again, Jōjō is really more interested in the men’s internal journeys. Sasaki has to carry most of Kunieda’s purely through acting. Satō gets more support from the script, but has the more complex journey. His aggression towards strangers seems at times like an attempt to provoke God, at others like an attempt to test the boundaries of a universe in which he desperately hopes to find some kind of order or reason.

There’s a lot of difficult material here to fit into a two hour film, and Jōjō does an impressive job, aided by his highly capable cast and crew. The result is a satisfying mystery thriller with a deep undercurrent of melancholy which will stay with you.

Reviewed on: 26 Jul 2026