A transgender icon looks back on her life in Yusaku Matsumoto’s musical comedy-drama.
“What even is effeminate? I’m just being myself.”
I actually had no idea that This is I was a biopic going in. Expecting this to be just a straightforward drama, it was the end text that betrayed the reality of this film. I was surprised because it doesn’t really play like a biopic – a genre so often filled with lavish praise and love for its subject matter. This is I feels a lot more balanced. It focuses on Ai Haruna (Haruki Mochizuki), a TV personality and singer known for being the winner of the transgender pageant Miss International Queen in 2009. This award bookends the film, with her winning and looking back at the events that led her to this moment, from the bullying she experienced as a young boy, through to the big changes she experiences. First it comes from the transgender nightclub she works at, where she meets others like her, and then through them she is introduced to male-to-female surgeon Doctor Koji Wada (Takumi Saito).
While Ai’s life is the general focus of the film, there is extra care taken to give her friendship with Wada, giving us a movie that only celebrates one person and the way she took her life into her own hands, but also the way that this life was shaped by those around her. Wada is in many ways a protagonist all on his own, and the film celebrates him just as much, looking at the struggles he faces not as a trans person but as someone who helps individuals find themselves. A tragedy on his operating table puts him in the spotlight, embroiling him in a controversy he can never escape.
Watching he and Ai support one another during their roughest patches is what makes This is I so appealing. Both Mochizuki and Saito are excellent actors, with a strong chemistry that really sells the friendship between them. The acting is extremely down to earth and real, with many
The film’s pretty straightforward structuring might be one of the weaker elements, however. While it knows what it wants to say, and employs a high number of great actors to do so, the story beats are just a little bit too familiar to feel all that impactful. There are no major surprises here; it’s every underdog story you’ve seen, but it has a few tricks to keep things moving. One of them is the great cast of trans actors, bubbly characters who inject life into the film whenever things are feeling a little rote, and the other is the occasionally out-of-nowhere musical numbers.
And even now I don’t quite know what to make of them. The musical numbers are a bit extraneous, I think. They don’t really add too much, other than providing a break from everything else, and the first one comes in so late into the story you didn’t think this would even be a musical at all. The songs are few and far between, but they’re not bad in any way. At their worst they’re a bit samey, but when they work they help alleviate the story and enrich the plot by giving Ai a means with which she can effectively directly address the audience.
In the end, the film ticks a lot of the right boxes, and manages to escape a few of the traps of typical biopics, by avoiding a few cliches and replacing them with some toe-tapping musical numbers. Thematically, it works to bring us into her world, even if they are jarring. This is I is a fun film, filled with powerful, realistic performances that encourages people to not only take their life into their own hands, but that no man, or woman, is an island.
Verdict: An engaging pair of leads and a compelling dramatic through-line is all This is I needs to get through the finish line, but its visual and musical embellishments are what let it stand out above the rest.
Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: 3/10
Sex: Both of them
Drama: 8/10
Wada: 600 penises cut and counting!
Title: Yes, we see what you’re doing. Very clever.
This is I (2026)
Japanese
Director: Yusaku Matsumoto
Writer: Masahiro Yamaura
CAST
Haruki Mochizuki – Ai Haruna
Takumi Saito – Dr. Koji Wada
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