God’s Puzzle (2008)

God’s Puzzle is a Japanese movie directed by Takashi Miike, produced by Haruki Kadokawa, and based on a science fiction novel by Shinji Kimoto. It was released by Toei in Japan on June 7, 2008.

In an attempt to make the scientific jargon from the original novel more palatable to mainstream movie audiences, Miike simplified certain aspects of the story and replaced the book’s original protagonist with a new character—his vastly stupider twin brother. The result is an adolescent comedy with heavy use of CG effects as visual aides.

The film stars Hayato Ichihara as a rock ‘n’ roll-obsessed part-time worker at a sushi restaurant named Motokazu. When his twin brother goes on a trip overseas and asks him to sit in for role at a university physics seminar, he thinks he’ll just be able to sit there silently and leave. However, his tasks gets a little more complicated when the professor (Yuriko Ishida) enlists him to go track down a teen prodigy named Saraka Homizu (Mitsuki Tanimura) who hasn’t been showing up for lectures lately.

Saraka is a genius who designed an experimental particle accelerator capable of recreating the Big Bang on a subatomic level. When Motokazu visits her at her home, she’s initially unresponsive, but during their subsequent conversation, he utters a suggestion that captures her imagination: “What if you could recreate the universe from scratch?”

Saraka begins dedicating all her effort to this goal, knowing that her success would actually mean the destruction of reality as we know it. Meanwhile, mostly clueless Motokazu eventually figures out the implications of what she’s trying to do…