Persona AKA Kamen Gakuen (2001)

Description:

Into the bully-infested home room class struts a fearless, ceramic-masked student. Squarely confronting a gang of ruffians, it is soon discovered that behind the mask is none other than Danta, an otherwise weakling student who has heretofore been picked on relentlessly by these same bullies. Donned with his mask, however, Danta exhibits a totally other personality, lacking fear and intimidation. The other students, looking on, soon experiment with the power of masks and find to their glee that behind a facade of anonymity, they experience an overwhelming power to act without the confines of self-consciousness. At the same time a major fashion blitz is hitting Japanese media starring the mysterious Hiroko, who has only been seen behind her characteristic porcelain mask. Her ever-increasingly popular appearances, displaying the fashions of designer Daimon, perpetuate the popularity of the masks as much as they do Daimon's clothing fashion. A "kamen (mask) fad" soon grips the entire high school, resulting in late night parties amounting to socially uninhibited public orgies. Such lack of social inhibition rapidly turns ugly as interests shift from hedonism to violence. Soon waves of violent, masked youth fill the streets terrorizing the public. And then the deaths begin to occur. The media soon begins to refer to the school as Kamen Gakuen, the School of Masks. A local tabloid reporter covering this bizarre convergence of masks, enlists the aid of kamen gakuen student Yuki (Kurosu Maya). Through her network of friends, Yuki is soon privy to an entire underworld of kamen events, which eventually lead her to the mask maker, Dojima (Fujiwara Tatsuya). Dojima, it turns out, is a very introverted soul, suffering from maladjusted memories of his father's violence against his mother. Seeking haven from his father's violent blood which flows through his veins, Dojima pours his heart and soul into the creation of masks whereby true reality may be hidden behind facade. Yuki is soon drawn to the perplexed and foreboding Dojima, despite increasing evidence that Dojima may be behind the rash of mask-related murders. Through her investigative prowess, Yuki soon finds herself as a mask-wearing model (!!) side-by-side Hiroko in Daimon's fashion shows. As such, she not only gathers crucial evidence into the mask-related deaths, but unwittingly becomes the target of the mysterious murderer's scheme.