Takashi Komatsu's PERSONA (KAMEN GAKUEN), w/ Tatsuya Fujiwara, Maya Kurosu, Ikkei Watanabe, Yûma Is

Thanks to SexGoreMutants, via ScreenAnarchy's own logboy, for bringing the following to my attention: Screen Entertainment Ltd. apparently is scheduled to release Takashi Komatsu's Persona (Kamen gakuen) on DVD in the U.K. on February 20th of next year, under its new label Screen World. (Komatsu, incidentally, is the director of the upcoming horror movie Kidan.) Persona was released theatrically in Japan by Tôei K.K. on August 5th, 2000.

The screenplay for Persona was written by Hiroshi Hashimoto, and was ultimately based on the novel Kamen gakuen satsujin-jiken - 2-nen A-gumi tantei-kyoku by Osamu Sôda. Its principal cast was as follows: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Maya Kurosu, Ikkei Watanabe, Yûma Ishigaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Maaya Ono, Ayumi Shigemori, Akaji Maro, Ren Ôsugi, Hiromitsu Suzuki, and Hirotarô Honda.

Below is a synopsis for Persona from the website of international sales agent Horizon Entertainment Ltd.; there's a link for a trailer for the movie at the bottom of this article.

Yuki Kawamura and Mitsugu Ashihara are Grade 11 students at the private Koyokan High School. One day they receive an e-mail invitation to a 'mask party' from Shuji Tonomura, whom they remember as a quiet, introverted classmate from middle school.

Strange things start to happen at the school. Toru Danda, a target of bullying who has stopped coming to school, shows up one day wearing a strange mask and acting like a completely different person. From that day on, one student after another dons a mask and is reborn within the school community. The fashion appeals to the twin desires to be anonymous and to be someone else, and quickly becomes a social phenomenon. Then Shuji is found dead. Yuki and Mitsugu enlist the help of Yaba, a relative of Yuki's and a reporter for a weekly magazine, and commence a serious investigation of the case. Now they encounter Akira Dojima - a youth obsessed with the making of strange, beautiful masks - and a number of other people connected with the mask fashion: Daiman, a designer it has made famous; Hiroko, his fashion-model sister; Toshi, a man with beautiful eyes who is, like Hiroko, a model; Akira's sister Reika Dojima, who lives hidden in the mask workshop; the girl with the blue eyelashes who may be Toru's girlfriend; and Initial D, who appears on a website for devotees of the masks. Successive murders occur around Akira. A complicated mix of people's motives and desires makes a fashion show at the school the stage for the birth of a second and third tragedy.

Persona trailer (streaming, Windows Media)
Japanese Movie Database: Persona