Award winning study of urban disillusionment and disaffected youth. Friends Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) and Yuji (Jo Adagiri) are aimless young men stuck in dead-end jobs in a dreary factory in Tokyo. Mamoru, the more anti-social of the two, is obsessed with his pet project of acclimatising a poisonous jellyfish to fresh water by gradually changing the water in its tank. One night, he inexplicably murders his boss' family and is sentenced to death. Yuji, left to continue the jellyfish experiment, befriends Mamoru's estranged father, and the two form a bond. But Yuji's attachment to the jellyfish is even stronger, and problems arise when he accidentally releases the poisonous creature into the canals of Tokyo.