"Yamakawa's 16mm feature...reaches parts that no other film about students has reached, before or since. Its approach seems at first sight as scattershot as early Godard, but the structure turns out to be as exact as trigonometry. Its four central characters (three boys and a girl who is their intellectual superior) are variously involved in an avant-garde theatre group and in the university rugby team...In the background is the Ikeda government's plan for Japan's 'economic miracle'. The underlying theme is revealed gradually...around two issues: teamwork as concerted social action versus teamwork as ignominious social conformity, and individuality as fulfillment versus individuality as loneliness...Yamakawa's achievement is to take generally familiar material about student life and to fictionalize it in the fullest sense. That is, to pull it into patterns that allow him to scrutinize it from several different perspectives at once. The result is (that) the most casual and offhand moments become privileged bearers of larger meanings as they take their place in the film's complex scheme of things." --Tony Rayns, Sight and Sound, Spring '86