In 2014, Mipo O burst on the international stage with The Light Shines Only There (2014). Her film, a drama-romance depicting two troubled youths try to break their ego-defences to reach each other’s subject, won many awards, establishing her as one of the most promising directional voices in Japan.

Yet, after delivering her fourth feature film, Being Good (2015), Mipo O suddenly disappeared from the directorial stage. The demand to function as a mother to her children and as a wife to her husband caused her, unintentionally, to go on a hiatus for eight years – it was structurally impossible to combine her work as director and as mother. After eight years, armed with her experience of being a mother, she returns to the silver screen – in 2024, she made Living in Two Worlds and now, in 2025, she reunites with screenwriter Ryo Takada to deliver How Dare You?, a heartwarming comedy-drama about parental figures and youthful love.

The narrative of How Dare You? commences on the day that the children of fourth grade must present their essay to the class. Soma (Daiki Oguma), the bossy leader of the class pet club, for instance displays his knowledge of bugs with his essay. Yet, for Yuishi Ueda (Tetta Shimada), things do not go as planned for as he is silenced by the teacher – his honest words reduced to the stature of mockery, after saying something that makes the whole class laugh.

Kokoa Miyake (Ruri) shocks the teacher (Shunsuke Kazama) and her fellow students by delivering a heartfelt attack on those responsible for global warming – for messing up the future for the children – and those failing to take responsibility to turn things around: the adults. Yuishi, on the other hand, promptly falls in love, starts striking up conversations with her and delves into books to learn more about the environment. Not long thereafter, Haruto (Youta Mimoto), the class-clown, joins Yuishi and Kokoa – a comrade for the cause, but also a rival in Yuishi’s quest to secure Miyake’s affection.

Mipo O’s How Dare you? opens an endearing and easily recognizable portrait of the pleasures, pressures, worries, fights, and frustrations of elementary school students. Mipo O signals, with refined sensibility, what determines the field that determines the child’s conscious mind – i.e. the mass of signifiers of their parents, teacher and peers, and sketches out the variety of personalities that result from being subjected to the signifier; the diverse subjective solutions that are in being formulated in response to the encompassing presence of the Other.  

What causes the framing of these pleasures, worries, frustrations to be so endearing for the spectator is the fact that the adult spectator, riddled by his own joys and struggles, cannot but consider the children’s psyche as being mundane – from the perspective of adult’s ‘reality’, the reality of the child seems deceptively trivial.  

The evocation of the supposed triviality of children’s psyche is masterfully utilized by Mipo O to confront the spectator, who is suddenly forced into the position of the flustered teacher, with the fact that children can transcend the mundanity of their ‘selfish’ psyche to establish a form of social consciousness (Psycho-note 1). However, at a deeper level, Miyake’s angry speech signals the often-ignored truth that the child’s signifier, wherever it balances itself on the see-saw where narcissism and social consciousness play, must be taken seriously – their psyche cannot be trivialized.   

It is, in our view, this truth that How Dare You? is all about – the true How dare you is addressed to the parental Other that refuses to listen. Mipo O brings the dynamic between child and parent, in focus for the first time by framing certain interactions between Yuichi’s mother, convincingly portrayed by Yu Aoi, and her husband (-). These interactions do no only echo the difficulties inherent to parenting, but also shows that divergent perspectives on parenting can cause relational tensions. These moments show that, for the parent, making space for one’s child’s subjectivity goes hand in hand with wielding the signifier right – adjusted to peculiarity of the child as subject – as to facilitate the coming-into-being of one’s child. In the finale – a sequence where the drama reaches its high, Mipo O sharpens the focus on the question of parenting by contrasting different parental styles, different approaches to one’s child’s signifiers (Narra-note 1).  

While How Dare You? explores parental dynamics and the way such dynamics impact the subjectivity of their children, the emphasis on environmental issues does confront the spectator with his complacency, his reluctance to change, and his impossibility to see the impact of one’s own consumption on the environment. We, who are imprisoned within the logic of capitalism, neoliberalism, and consumerism, often demand change based on knowing the facts, but are unable to accept being forced to change – Do not touch my enjoyment (e.g. my car, my steak, … etc.)!

While the composition of How Dare You? is not without any stylistic flair (e.g. long tracking takes, the arc shot, …etc.), Mipo O relies heavily on cruder dynamism to bring her heartwarming narrative to live. The benefit of such stylistic choice lies in the that, by echoing the style of documentaries, she can visually support the performances of her young cast and enhance the naturalness of their interactions (Cine-note 1).

The musical decorations, on the other hand, ensures that the endearing light-heartedness of the interactions between the children continually stand out. In fact, one could even argue that the music offers the spectator a reminder of the fact that, at such a young age, conflicts and tensions have a fleeting character and that the signifiers they wield are marked by a certain bluntness.

How Dare You? has many endearing moments that will touch the spectator, but the beating heart of the narrative lies in its refined exploration of different parental styles and the effects they sort on the child’s coming-into-being. With her narrative, Mipo O delivers one of the most convincing arguments to parents to create space for the subjectivity of their child and to take their signifiers – their pleasures, pressures, worries, fights, and frustrations – seriously.  

Notes

Psycho-note 1: With her narrative, Mipo O shows that a subject’s fixation on a social topic is ever a response to the Other, as represented by a parental figure.

Narra-note 1: The finale also shows that parents do not always see the effect of their signifiers on the subjectivity of their child.

Cine-note 1: The use of jump-cuts allows Mipo O to concatenate brief fragments of children’s acts and signifiers – fleeting glances at the diverse personalities of children – andsketch out the atmosphere of given space, e.g. the classroom, the park, … etc.