Contributing writer ¨C Films about men and their sex dolls, including Craig Gillespie¡¯s ¡°Lars and the Real Girl¡± (2007) and Hirokazu Kore-eda¡¯s ¡°Air Doll¡± (2009), may portray the owners sympathetically, but they also frame them as damaged outsiders, if not total creeps.
Mutsuki Kameyama¡¯s sci-fi romance ¡°12 Months of Kai¡± erases any ick factor by centering the film on a 28-year-old female web designer who presents as almost boringly average and setting its story in the near future (2025 to be exact), where a mysterious company called Somnium manufactures sophisticated personal care humanoids (PCH for short). These machines perform sexual services but otherwise bear little resemblance to the low-tech blow-up dolls of yore.
Instead of plumbing the depths of human sexuality, Kameyama, who wrote the original script, focuses on the protagonist¡¯s struggle to normalize her unusual relationship with her PCH in the eyes of not only friends and family but also herself, while dealing with standard-issue romantic drama complications.
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