Fumi Nikaido

High schooler Haruna befriends loner Yamada, then is drawn into the tangled relationship between him, a model and the girl who loves him unreasonably.

One of Osamu Tezuka's most adult and sexually-charged works, Barbara (1973-74) was originally serialised as a follow-up to Ayako (1972-73) in Big Comic from July 1973 to May 1974. Barbara is an adult-orientated fantasy tale filled with love and the occult from Osamu Tezuka's reimagining of "The Tales of Hoffmann". Its story deals with the erotic and bizarre experiences of a famous novelist called Yosuke Mikura whose life is tossed upside down by a mysterious girl named "Barbara". The controversial story, dealing with various taboos such as forbidden love, mystery, art, Eros, scandal and occultism, was said to have been impossible to be cinematized at the time of its original publication, but was made into a live-action film for the 90th Anniversary of Osamu Tezuka's birth by his son Macoto Tezka (The Legend of the Stardust Brothers).

Directed by Arata Ôshima, son of rebel filmmaker Nagisa Ôshima, who had praised Sono's early work before his passing, this documentary gives insight into the man, the poet, the painter, the scriptwriter, the husband and the boy who will eventually grow up to be the Sion Sono. Lineage, history and the past meeting the present are themes in this film in which Ôshima connects the dots in Sono's creative life by taking the camera to the site of his upbringing and following the production of his most recent film The Whispering Star.