The film follows the director, Atsushi Sakahara, a victim of the 1995 Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attack, and Araki Hiroshi, a current executive member of the doomsday cult Aleph (previously Aum Shinrikyo) behind the attack, as they travel to their hometowns in the Kyoto prefecture.

[2] In 1995, Aum Shinrikyo, a Tokyo-based Doomsday cult, conducted the largest terrorist attack in Japan's history.

Director Atsushi Sakahara was on one of those cars and has suffered lifelong damage to his nervous system and effects of PTSD as a result.

The men begin their journey at the organization's facilities in Tokyo; the space consists of a dojo and residence.

Renunciates live and work at the minimalist facilities, practicing an ascetic lifestyle which seeks to limit distractions.

Their clothing and food are monochromatic and left intentionally bland; the living space small and shared.

Portraits of Aum's leader Asahara, who was on death row at the time of shooting and has since been executed, hang in every room.

Aum's apocalyptic obsession and terrorism stemmed from warped interpretations of "legitimate" religions (namely Western mysticism and Indian Buddhism).

We learn that when Araki was born, he was very sickly and his parents spent a lot of time and money taking care of him.

"Out of a sense of duty," Araki replies, then telling Atsushi about his younger brother who was misdiagnosed with cancer while at university.

It takes them up to Mount Hiei, a place of many Shinto myths, where they talk about the introduction of Buddhism to Japan.

In 2001, Atsushi met and married a woman who confessed that she had been a part of Aum and asked him to not mention his relationship to the attack to her parents.

But her name had been on a paper in the pocket of one of the men on death row connected to the Tokyo Subway attack, and her visa was denied.