What Happens
The plot is pretty barebones here. We get an opening montage of freaky shit (someone biting a chicken's eyeball, a nude lady in a basket of snakes etc.) while someone bellows a bunch of nonsense ("Dog boiled in the cauldron of hell! Monster child in many-hued swaddling clothes!" and things of that ilk) before a intertitle pops up. I guess this is a prelude to the prologue...
"Prologue: Midori Joins the Fairground Entertainers"
We meet the titular Midori. She's a young girl selling flowers to support her destitute family. See meets a man in a hat who tells her that the place she is selling her flowers at is too depressing and that she'll have better luck if she tries selling them somewhere livelier. He asks about her parents and she tells him that her mother is sick and that her father has "gone away." He offers to buy all her flowers and tells her that if she is ever in trouble to come and find him. He then tells her to go home since there are many bad men about.
Midor goes home and informs her mother that she's sold all her flowers and asks if she can go on her class trip. Her mother does not answer though because she's dead and getting her vagina gnawed upon by rats. After a funeral Midori, having nowhere else to go, goes to the address the man in the hat had given her. It's apparently a freak show.
An assortment of sideshow freaks tell her the show isn't open yet and to come back later, but she tells them she's there to see the man in the hat. He's apparently the boss of the freak show and is not there. They then talk about how pretty she is and then molest her.
We get a montage of abuse heaped upon Midori while she narrates about no longer going to school and wishing that she were dead. The prologue ends with her watching a train go by in the distance.
"Song One: Patience and Submission"
We see a dead chicken and snake on the ground and the woman from the prelude to the prologue that bit a chicken's eye barfing. I guess that was Midori though it's hard to tell since her hair is done differently. The other members of the show yell at her for being squeamish.
Later, she wakes up to find the snake lady having a threesome with a giant and a dude missing both his arms. The dudes tell Midori to join them but she runs away and finds the man in the hat licking the eyeball of some other woman though I have no idea who it's supposed to be.
Midori later finds a litter of puppies that she feeds and plays with. A woman from the freak show watches her do this and after Midori leave smashes the puppies and stomps on them, killing them all. She brings the meat back to her coworkers and feeds it to them. They are a bit surprised when they learn it's dog but keep eating. Midori, however, just cries.
It's winter now and Midori again stares longingly at a train in the distance. The snake lady tells her to forget about going to Tokyo and think about helping them, leading to the Cinderella portion of the film where she's forced to wash a bunch of laundry and mend curtains and stuff. The dude with no arms (who is also bandaged like a mummy) assaults her as she shivers in the cold.
Later Midori is still mending stuff while watching the lady who smashed up the puppies practice breathing fire. The puppy smasher then takes a break to pee and Midori is shocked to learn that the lady has a dick
Later Midori is scolded for spending too much time in town while running errands and is made to wash some dudes with physical deformities. She is disgusted by this and tries to run away but is stopped by the other members of the troupe who probably sexually assault her again while she says in overdub that she wants to go back to school.
She later dreams of meeting her father again, but before she can get to him all her limbs break and go at weird angles and a caterpillar goes in her ear. She cries out for help but the troupe of performs from the freak show appear and mock her, telling her "You'll never know happiness as a human being." When she wakes up she has a fever so the man in the hat gives her the day off.
It turns out the the troupe has run out of money. They don't have money for food or to move on to another town. All the performers are angry but the mummy guy says that a new addition to the troupe is coming to join them from Tokyo. He says the person must be a lunatic to want to come out to the shithole they are currently in. The giant and the mummy guy then blame Midori for jinxing them saying their recent monetary problems only arose after she showed up.
Midori goes to again look at trains and wave at them as they pass.
"Song Two: A Dwarf Emerges from the Dark"
The new addition to the troupe arrives. He is a dwarf magician named Wonder Masamitsu. He can do some weird trick where he puts himself inside a bottle. Everyone is completely poleaxed by it. He seems to take a liking to Midori and she in turn seems to like him as well.
They go to a field of flowers and frolic and Masamitsu tells Midori that he'd be happy to marry her. She tells him that she isn't a virgin. They kiss and turn into dragonflies.
Wonder Masamitsu proves to be a big hit and the freak show soon is making money hand over fist. Some of the other performers though are annoyed that the crowds only want to see him and think that he and Midori who is now his assistant are stealing the limelight from them.
Masamitsu and Midori later get their picture taken together and then eat corn and watch ships pass. She asks him how he does the bottle trick and he tells her a bunch of nonsense and asks if she understands. She does. I don't.
The Mummy and the Giant think that Midori is getting full of herself because of Masamitsu and harass her. The Giant throws her about for a bit before Masamitsu uses his magic to make her huge and bust up the tent. It's all an illusion though but the other members of the troupe are thoroughly freaked out and thus do as Masamitsu orders. They set to work cleaning and Masamitsu tells Midori to go get some money and have fun.
Later Masamitsu tells the man in the hat to pay his workers more. He doesn't want to but ultimately agrees to do so.
We then check in with Midori who is eating some candy and sitting on some steps. The mummy guy shows up and apologizes "about earlier" though whether that was for being mean to her because of professional jealousy or sexually assaulting her, it's not entirely clear. He tells her that he loves her as Masamitsu looks on in secret.
The mummy leaves and vows not to let Masamitsu have her but after seeing a decaying arm on the ground, gets sucked into some quicksand. A version of him with arms appears and tells him to give him a hand so he can pull him out. The Mummy knows that this second armed version of him is actually Masamitsu doing another illusion. Masamitsu tells him he can't do anything for himself and buries him alive telling him that he'll never have Midori.
Back at the freak show everyone is amped as fuck over their raises. They wonder where the mummy guy is and later find him with a mouthful of mud. They all act like this is a common way to off oneself or something since they ask why he has a mouthful of mud rather than how that came to be. Midori stares at Masamitsu and then runs off. Masamitsu goes after her and asks if she saw him. She tells him that she saw him make the mummy swallow mud and that he scares her. He tells her that he did it for her and not to tell anyone.
Later a guy shows up at the show claiming to be a movie director. He is looking for Midori. He offers her a role in his new movie and Midori starts dreaming of the big time.
Masamitsu shows up though and tears the dude's business card up and tells him to hit the bricks saying he might be an impostor. Midori is crestfallen.
Later that night Masamitsu goes and tells Midori to get ready for the show. She's hiding under her blanket and says she has a headache. Masamitsu lifts the covers and finds that she has pieced the director's business card back together. Masamitsu throws the pieces and then smashes Midori's head into a mirror. He then puts her in his bottle and tells her that he will work alone.
During the show he starts getting heckled and then proceeds to tell the audience that he hates all of them. He does some wizard shit on them that causes a montage of body horror to happen. The man in the hat yells for him to stop but the fire-breathing trans puppy crusher implores Masamitsu to continue. Police rush in but it was all an illusion.
According to the intertitle cards that appear following this scene this was apparently some kind of magic that came to Japan via China centuries ago and had been outlawed because of how terrible it was.
Masamitsu is exhausted and has a bloody nose from his little stunt. The performers all thought it was great, but the man in the hat is furious because the customers will press charges though no one knows what they could possibly press charges for since ultimately nothing happened to them. The man in the hat says that either way they'll have to go somewhere else. At that moment Masamitsu comes to and tells him that he won't be going with them.
He finds Midori outside praying and apologizes for earlier and asks her to come with him. She tells him that she doesn't want to go far away anymore, she just wants to go home.
"Final Song: Under the Cherry Blossom"
Masamitsu uses his magic to send Midori back to Tokyo. Her mother is alive again and her father hasn't left home. They scold her for coming home so late and tell her that she needs to go to bed earlier because she has a class trip the next day. It's another illusion, or maybe a dream. I'm not sure, but either way it's not real.
She wakes up back at the freak show with Masamitsu. He asks her to go with him somewhere and she agrees.
Later the troupe seems down in the dumps. The Giant appears and is like, "Yo what's going on?" Apparently the boss ran off with all the money. The show's over. The Snake Lady says that she's going to find some rich old guy to take care of her. The Giant doesn't seem too concerned since he's had offers from other shows and offers to introduce the two deformed dudes to the owners. The trans fire-breathing puppy crusher meanwhile cuts off her hair.
Midori and Masamitsu arrive and say goodbye and Midori thanks them "for everything" which I guess includes the sexual assaults and mental abuse. She and Masamitsu then walk beneath cherry blossoms because this is an anime. She tells him that she's going to miss all the guys and girls back at the freak show which is some Stockholm Syndrome shit.
They still have some time before they have to leave so Masamitsu has her wait while he goes to get something for them to eat. Some time later as he heads back to Midori, Masamitsu witnesses a robbery gone wrong and ends up getting stabbed by the robber.
The bus that he and Midori were supposed to take comes and goes so Midori goes into town to look for him. She wanders about a ruinous town, seeing the same coughing guy a few times before it dawns on her that he is gone.
She then sees the troupe from the freak show on some steps including Masamitsu and the deceased mummy guy. They laugh at her so she gets a stick and attacks them, screaming, "DIE ALL OF YOU!" as she does. Eventually the vanish. It was all an illusion and Midori realizes that she is once again alone in a cold, uncaring world.
Thoughts
Not a particularly cheery tale to be certain, but the plot synopsis alone cannot begin to covey just how wrong and unnerving this movie is. The content of the story, the way it’s animated, the music; it’s all sleazy and bleak which makes the movie feel like something that no one was ever meant to see.
From an artistic stand-point I suppose it’s a bit impressive since the entire film was animated by a single guy who used his life savings to produce this movie, but that doesn’t make this a movie I’d really recommend to most people. There are things here you can’t unsee; things that will get in your head and gnaw away at you. Avoid unless you’ve got a strong stomach and a good therapist.
Giant Robots: Nope.
Lesbian Subtext: Nope.
Boobs: Yup and dicks and vaginas and eyeball licking and all kinds of kinky shit.
Body Horror: So much.
Magical Teen Girls: Nope but there was a magical dwarf if that counts.
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