There’s no shortage of strange discoveries that have been made on earth. Writer Takuya Kato and director Yuuna Kamiura join forces to imagine a world where seven gigantic orifices appear around Japan on Netflix’s new show Seven Orifices. The first episode gives us a brief introduction to where the story is headed in what looks like a weirdly captivating show.
Spoilers Ahead
What happened to the investigators?
The orifices appear randomly, and they’re so tall that they can be seen from an airplane. The top pierces through the clouds, and the people who try to investigate get no success. Nobody can explain their origins and how they came to be, and the investigators who went in never returned. A total of seventeen investigators went in, and their tethers extending out of the orifices suggest they’re alive. It’s a mystery that nobody is able to solve, and after three and a half years of failed investigations, the Japanese Prime Minister finally decides to put an end to it. The government asks the people to treat the orifices as a part of the landscape of the country, and the people start to make wild conspiracy theories about the large holes. Many people ventured inside the orifices on their own, only to never return again.
Who is Ozawa?
After years of failure, there finally comes a man who claims to know more about the orifices than the rest of the people. The man’s name is Ozawa, and he treats the holes as deities who can relieve one from distress and human fragility. Ozawa is a man who has gotten people to serve him with sharp tactics since he was in kindergarten. Now Ozawa has declared that only these holes can provide the liberation people are seeking. Ozawa’s belief is this strong one primary reason: the people who went in never came out. He believes the people inside found something worthwhile that made them feel it’s better than the world outside, and Ozawa himself called for people who’d want to go in with him during the month of December. He declares the month to be the Festival of the Orifices, and eight people join Ozawa in a beautiful resort-like lodging facility. Ozawa instructs his followers to set a date for themselves in the month of December. The people will choose the date when they wish to go inside the orifice and document their reason properly before doing so.
Who’s the first follower to enter the Orifice?
Scheduled to go inside the orifice on December 6th, Kawabata starts to narrate his story and reasons for taking the decision. Kawabata has been a docile person throughout his life, and his biggest problem is that he’s incapable of feeling anger. Always the sweetest person in the room, Kawabata spent his childhood like every other Japanese kid but could never fulfill the dreams his father had for him. He tried to take up soccer in order to make his father happy, but his lousy play didn’t impress him, and he stopped playing. He then tried his hand at baseball, and he befriended Teppei and Yuki. Once the three boys were playing catch, and a crazy lady splashed cola on Kawabata, but he was unfazed as ever because he doesn’t have a single bone made of rage in his body. When his favorite eraser got stolen, his father advised him to retaliate and fight back for what he deserved. Despite his father’s efforts, Kawabata fails to acquire the feeling of anger.
Kawabata grows up and finally goes to college, and he also starts to date a girl. His and the girl’s dynamic is pretty unstable, as the girl always arrives a couple hours late to their dates. Her justification behind this is that she’d happily wait for him too, and he doesn’t have any other plans to attend to. Kawabata is still kind and the nice guy he is, but his friends talk to him about it. Apparently, Kawabata’s girlfriend stays out all night and also meets another guy to go on photography trips. They encourage Kawabata to speak up if he wishes to have equality in the relationship, and Kawabata starts to devise a plan to confront his girlfriend.
What does Kawabata do before entering the orifice?
Kawabata tries to exercise in order to get the anger out of him. He starts to practice facial expressions of anger, working out, and ranting to himself that nobody can mess with him. Ozawa tells him that he’s been suppressing his emotions for too long to get the acceptance and validation of others, and he needs to let it go. Kawabata has now started to experience the emotions he has buried inside, and now he just needs an opportunity to get them all out. He asks his girlfriend to come over, who’s once again late by three hours. Kawabata confronts her and asks her to explain herself, but she’s like a broken tape recorder that keeps rewinding on a loop. She’d be okay with waiting if he was ever late, and once again she tells him that he didn’t have any plans later on. Kawabata tries to reason with her and make her understand that she can’t do things that affect him in a bad way, but her replies to him seem almost robotic. Kawabata finally breaks down, shouts at her, and slams the water bottle in his hand on the ground before breaking up with her. The other followers to whom he was describing his story applaud him for doing the right thing, and he’s somewhat okay now that he’s broken up. Kawabata’s parents also went inside the massive hole on the face of the earth, and he’s too happy to follow where his parents went. His entire life is now documented as he walks towards the orifice on December 6th. He looks up at it with wonder and almost a childlike innocence in his eyes, even though he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. The orifice’s entrance looks like it landed on a park full of flowers, and Kawabata walks into the unknown.
