Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid

image for Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid

Short takes

Not suitable under 11; parental guidance to 12 (themes, sexual references, subtitles)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid
  • a review of Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 13 May 2024.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 11 Not suitable due to themes, sexual references and subtitles.
Children aged 11–12 Parental guidance recommended due to themes and sexual references.
Children aged 13 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild themes and occasional coarse language
Length: 75 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Mai (voice of Asami Seto) has just graduated from high school and is about to go off to a college that Sakuta (voice of Kaito Ishikawa) will have to study extremely hard in order to get into. His sister Kaede (voice of Yurika Kubo) has come to terms with her split personality and is doing well. She is even repairing the relationship she had with her mother, who suffered her own nervous breakdown and was hospitalised, blaming herself for failing to be the mother her children needed. As their mother begins to improve and Kaede begins to reconnect with their parents, Sakuta feels isolated and unneeded. He wakes up one morning only to discover that he has become invisible. No one can see or hear him, and his family does not seem to realise that he even exists. Sakuta travels to a parallel universe to find the answers he is seeking but what he encounters instead is a perfect world where he resolved his sister’s bullying issue before it got bad, where his family is still intact and where he is still adored by Mai. Knowing it is all too good to be true, Sakuta opts to return to his original universe to try to make things better, even though it would be much easier to stay. As he reflects on his life and all he has seen and experienced, he concludes that he has control over the direction his future will take. He recognises that he has kept himself from him mother, finding her struggles too painful to deal with or accept, and has attempted to go on without her. He realises that he needs to be the one to take the first step to remedy the situation. He needs to forgive her for her imperfections and make a point to connect with her, no matter how long it takes, because only once they have reconnected will he become visible to the world again.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Mental health; Family Breakdown: Repercussions of bullying; Feelings of uselessness or being invisible and abandoned.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • Mai steps on Sakuta’s toes and grinds them painfully into the ground.
  • A character slaps Sakuta in the face.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

  • None noted.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

  • None noted.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Mai’s mother tells her that she should be careful with Sakuta and make sure that he doesn’t cheat on her. Mentioning that her own poor taste in men may have been passed onto Mai.
  • When Mai comes to Sakuta’s house with a bag over her shoulder, Sakuta asks if she has brought a sleepover set and if she will be spending the night with him.
  • A girl tells Sakuta not to call her cute and that most pubescent boys have weird thoughts.
  • Sakuta tells Mai that if she would take a bath with him, he would stay in the tub forever.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • When Sakuta changes his clothes, he stands in his underwear and discovers a strange mark or scar running across his stomach. When Mai touches this mark Sakuta can’t feel anything. She continues to touch his stomach and then apologises for getting him, “all worked up”. They are about to kiss when the phone rings.
  • A character says to another: “I will come with you if you will be all lovey dovey with me”. The girl is told to wear a bunny suit.
  • Sakuta is shown naked in the bathtub from the torso up.
  • Mai sleeps with Sakuta. When he wakes up beside her in the morning the first thing he does is check to see if he is wearing any underwear. She swats him, telling him that all they did was kiss and then holds his head to her chest as he begs to always stay with her like that.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Idiot.

In a nutshell

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid is a Japanese anime with English subtitles that picks up exactly where Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out left off. The film is best suited to teen and older audiences.

The main messages from this movie are that no one is perfect, that people have breaking points, and that everyone deserves grace as they try to mend their mistakes and heal from the challenges that life throws their way. The film also contains the powerful message that we all have the ability to directly influence the outcome of our lives by the actions we take and by the way we perceive the world around us.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Compassion
  • Forgiveness
  • Courage
  • Responsibility
  • Integrity.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Bullying others and the effect this has not only on the victim but also on the victim’s family.
  • Severing family connections because it feels like the easier thing to do.
  • Neglecting mental health. Parents may like to talk about strategies that could help children in dealing with different scenarios and situations, such as, what they could do if they were feeling overly anxious or experiencing depression.