Story

Mai (voice of Asami Seto) has just graduated from high school and is about to go off to college. To get into the same college, Sakuta (voice of Kaito Ishikawa) will have to study extremely hard. His sister Kaede (voice of Yurika Kubo) has come to terms with her split personality and is doing well. She’s even repairing her relationship with her mother, who suffered her own nervous breakdown and was hospitalised, blaming herself for failing to be the mother her children needed.

As their mother begins to improve and Kaede begins to reconnect with their parents, Sakuta feels isolated and unneeded. He wakes up one morning and discovers that he has become invisible. No-one can see or hear him, and his family doesn’t seem to realise that he even exists.

Sakuta travels to a parallel universe to find the answers he seeks but encounters instead a perfect world where he resolved his sister’s bullying issue before it got bad, where his family is still intact and where Mai still adores him. Knowing it’s all too good to be true, Sakuta opts to return to his original universe to try to make things better, even though it would be much easier to stay.

As Sakuta reflects on his life and all he has seen and experienced, he concludes that he has control over his future. He recognises that he has kept himself away from his mother, because her struggles were too painful for him to deal with or accept. He also realises that he must be the one to take the first step towards fixing things between them. He needs to forgive his mother for her imperfections and find a way to connect with her, no matter how long it takes. Only once they have reconnected will Sakuta become visible to the world again.

Themes

Mental health; family breakdown; repercussions of bullying; feelings of uselessness or being invisible and abandoned

Violence

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid has some violence. For example:

• Mai steps on Sakuta’s toes and grinds them painfully into the ground.
• A character slaps Sakuta in the face.

Sexual references

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid has some sexual references. For example:

• Mai’s mother tells her that she should be careful with Sakuta and make sure that he doesn’t cheat on her. She mentions that she might have passed on her own poor taste in men to Mai.
• When Mai comes to Sakuta’s house with a bag over her shoulder, Sakuta asks whether she has brought a sleepover set and will be spending the night with him.
• A girl tells Sakuta not to call her cute and says that most pubescent boys have weird thoughts.
• Sakuta tells Mai that if she took a bath with him, he’d stay in the tub forever.

Alcohol, drugs and other substances

There’s no use of substances in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid.

Nudity and sexual activity

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid has some nudity and sexual activity. For example:

• When Sakuta changes his clothes, he stands in his underwear and discovers a strange mark or scar running across his stomach. When Mai touches the mark, Sakuta can’t feel anything. Mai continues to touch his stomach and then apologises for getting him ‘all worked up’. They’re about to kiss when the phone rings.
• A character says to another, ‘I will come with you if you will be all lovey dovey with me’. The girl is told to wear a bunny suit.
• Sakuta is shown naked in the bathtub from the torso up.
• Mai sleeps with Sakuta. When he wakes up beside her in the morning, the first thing he does is check to see whether he’s wearing any underwear. She swats him, telling him that all they did was kiss. Then she holds his head to her chest as he begs always to stay with her like that.

Product placement

There’s no product placement in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid.

Coarse language

There’s some mild coarse language in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid, including ‘idiot’.

Ideas to discuss with your children

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid is a Japanese anime with English subtitles. It picks up where Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out left off. The movie is best suited to teenage and older audiences.

These are the main messages from Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid:

• No-one is perfect.
• People have breaking points.
• Everyone deserves grace as they try to mend their mistakes and heal from life’s challenges.
• We can all influence the outcomes of our lives directly
• by the actions we take and the way we perceive the world around us.

Values in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid that you could reinforce with your children include compassion, forgiveness, courage, responsibility and integrity.

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid could also give you the chance to talk with your children about the real-life consequences of things like:

• bullying others and the effect this has not only on the victim but also on the victim’s family
• severing family connections because it feels like the easiest thing to do
• neglecting mental health, plus strategies that could help children to deal with conditions like anxiety or depression.