Japanese Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Little Miss Period (2019) by Shunsuke Shinada

The titular hero of this movie, Seiri-chan, is the menstrual cycle; “seiri” means literally period and “–chan” is the Japanese suffix for cute girls and children (and pets), hence the English “”. The original source of the film is a manga that in record time has been whipping up a storm of consensus within Japanese female audiences of all ages.

Little Miss Period” is screening at Camera Japan 2019

First appeared as a web manga before moving into printed form for major publisher Kadokawa's “Monthly Comic Beam”, Seiri-chan, surprisingly, is the brainchild of a man, Ken Koyama, who seems to have researched thoroughly his target audience. His anthropomorphized menstrual cycle is a giant heart-shaped “pink thing” with disturbingly wide-open eyes, big sensual lips, red pants and a medical cross as a nose. Moreover, the beast is armed with a humongous syringe, ready to withdraw massive amounts of blood out of her preys, leaving them drained and exhausted. She even delivers a violent “menstrual punch” on the stomach, sometimes also to men that deserve it. But Seiri-chan is not always a nuisance, she is also a friendly shoulder to lean on and she can give some good advice.

Things cannot get weirder than that, but in manga language it all fits well. For a while, the news of a live action adaptation has been circulating on the Internet, as thrilled fans wondered if Seiri-chan would be rendered in CGI or Anime form, but director who has an experience in Fuji TV's serials has found a good way to convey the wackiness of the manga on screen.

The plot is merely an excuse to showcase some women and girls visited by Seiri-chan without making it (like the manga) an episode movie. Aoko (Fumi Nikaido, “Au Revoir l'Été”, “Fly Me To The Saitama”) is a busy and energetic editor of a high-end publishing company in Tokyo; she is full of beans and always pro-active and ready for action, except for certain days of the month… Aoko is in fact one of those women that are severely affected by the arrival of the period (at the risk of being accused by her rather dislikeable boss to use it as an excuse), and when we say arrival of the period we literally mean it, as “Little Miss Period' is a giant fluffy plush toy that every month knocks at the door and move in.

Her fiancée Kubo is a handsome widower architect with a 10-year-old daughter (Hana Toyoshima) who is not taking very well her dad's plan to marry Aoko. Predictably, the first visit of Seiri-chan to the little girl will help the two women to get closer.

In a parallel thread, Aoko and her male colleague Yamauchi (Ren Sudo) are trying to convince the blogger and “almost-hikikomori” Nomiko Nieyu (, “Love and Other Cults”, “Enokida Trading Post”, “The Naked Director”) to write a serial column about youth sub-cultures for their magazine, after discovering she works in disguise as a janitor in their very office, carrying around a Seiri-chan the size of a sumo-wrestler. Aoko's sister (Risaki Matsukaze) too is in conversation with her own Seiri-chan while her male companion of studies – who has a massive crush on her – is badly dealing with another funny, huge elephant in the room: the inopportune sex drive!

I don't usually compare adaptations to their source material as I think they should be taken per se, but I would like to point out that Seiri-chan manga, having an episodic structure, presents in every chapter a very different approach and situation involving the period, including some more adult outcomes, like the anxiety of missing the period, casual sex, the reminder of using condoms, etc. This is totally absent in the movie that is obviously targeted to a very young audience but still an audience that is presumably not so naive. There is the feeling of a strong will to leave the movie light and fluffy and give space to the consolatory and camaraderie aspect of the period, which here is seen more as the essence of the less-positive aspects of womanhood, like low self-esteem, performance anxiety on the workplace, ect., without getting too deep into the causes of all that (and it wouldn't be the right place to do it anyway).

Having said that, the movie is entertaining and has some genuinely funny moments brought over by the surreal clumsiness of Seiri-chan, especially when lurking in the background with those inquisitive eyes. The male equivalent (in the sense that it shows up always at the wrong moment), the sex drive, is really spot-on funny; a huge, cumbersome phallic-shaped fluffy character that – with a dumb voice – keeps listing a series of arousing words.

In my opinion, the movie is also rescued by the presence of two great actresses, Nikaido and Itho, that are both having a stellar moment recently and that well embody two opposite aspect of feminine personalities.

With its wacky kawaii-ness and its unusual subject matter, “Little Miss Period” is harmless fun and fits well in the youth-dedicate edition of this year's Film Festival.


About the author

Adriana Rosati

On paper I am an Italian living in London, in reality I was born and bread in a popcorn bucket. I've loved cinema since I was a little child and I’ve always had a passion and interest for Asian (especially Japanese) pop culture, food and traditions, but on the cinema side, my big, first love is Hong Kong Cinema. Then - by a sort of osmosis - I have expanded my love and appreciation to the cinematography of other Asian countries. I like action, heroic bloodshed, wu-xia, Shaw Bros (even if it’s not my specialty), Anime, and also more auteur-ish movies. Anything that is good, really, but I am allergic to rom-com (unless it’s a HK rom-com, possibly featuring Andy Lau in his 20s)"

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