New Group

Yu returns to Japan after several years in the US and finds it difficult to fit into the rigid hierarchies and group dynamics at his new school. His desk neighbor Ai is not an outsider, but a noticeable alienation from her family and classmates makes her equally distant from social interaction. At first, a single student exhibits strange behavior, as if he were carrying out a command in a trance. To their confusion, he is soon joined by other students, until an entire group exhibits the same behavior in sync. Within a few days, these peculiarities continue to spread: more and more students and teachers join in, until almost the entire school is absorbed into bizarre group formations and human chains. Yu and Ai remain the only ones who not only notice this change, but are also able to resist it. Will they succeed in trusting each other, sticking together, and maintaining their resistance to the pull of conformity as the threatening mass continues to grow?