Netflix Japan premiered its original biographical drama film This Is I on February 10, 2026. The movie is helmed by director Yusaku Matsumoto and features Haruki Mochizuki in the lead role, alongside Takumi Saito as Dr. Koji Wada.
Netflix’s This Is I is based on a true story. The film centers on a teenager who faces persistent bullying while aspiring to become an idol. As the story unfolds, he searches for belonging and self-understanding, ultimately confronting questions of gender identity.
The movie This is I dramatizes the life of Japanese transgender TV personality and singer Haruna Ai. It also draws from the real-life work of Dr. Wada, who is known for his pioneering role in gender reassignment surgery in Japan.
This Is I recap: Kenji Onishi’s journey to becoming Haruna Ai in the Japanese Netflix biopic
The Japanese Netflix movie This Is I follows the life of Kenji Onishi, a boy who discovers his love for singing and dancing at a very young age. His mother supports him by making him a skirt, which he wears while performing in his neighborhood. However, Kenji is repeatedly mocked, bullied and physically assaulted for expressing himself this way.
As he grows older, Kenji continues to face rejection because he is not considered “masculine enough” by his peers and even by his father. The abuse intensifies, and one day he is sexually assaulted by his classmates.
When Kenji reports the incident to his teacher, the teacher places the blame on him instead. Deeply hurt and confused, Kenji begins questioning who he is, why he is different, and why others treat him this way.
Kenji’s life changes when he encounters a transgender cabaret performer named Aki. After watching Aki perform on stage, Kenji realizes what he wants to become. He follows Aki to the cabaret and later meets her backstage, where he confesses that he does not feel like a man and believes he is a woman.
Aki gives him a job at the cabaret, mainly working backstage. Soon, Kenji begins dressing as a woman and taking hormone pills like the other performers. These pills cause severe side effects, including vomiting.
Aki later introduces Kenji to Dr. Wada, a plastic surgeon who struggles with how far he should go to make his patients happy and save their lives. On the night Kenji debuts as a singer at the cabaret under the stage name Haruna Ai, Dr. Wada comes to watch.
After the performance, Wada tells Kenji that he shines on the stage brightly. Shocked, Kenji asks Wada to remove his testicles so his body will stop developing as a man. Although Wada is reluctant due to the legal and health risks, Kenji persists until Wada agrees and performs the surgery.
After the operation, Kenji feels freer living as Haruna Ai and begins performing more confidently. During this time, Ai meets a male idol named Takuya. Takuya becomes romantically interested in her, and they start dating. Soon he asks Ai to move in with him.
However, Ai becomes anxious about intimacy, believing that Takuya would want a woman’s body. She asks Dr. Wada to perform full gender-affirming surgery. Wada warns her of the life-threatening risks and agrees only if she first tells her parents that she wants to live as a woman.
With great fear, Ai tells her father. At first he is shocked, but he eventually accepts her, saying she will always be his child. Ai’s mother, however, does not accept her. Despite this, Ai proceeds with the surgery, which becomes successful.
After this she grows closer to Takuya and their relationship gets better. However it soon ends when Takuya’s family asks Ai to break up with him as she cannot have children. At the same time, Dr. Wada begins facing intense legal pressure. Because gender-affirming surgeries are illegal in their state, detectives start circling his clinic, warning him that he is breaking the law. However, Wada insists he is only trying to save lives.
Heartbroken, Ai breaks up and moves to Tokyo to pursue her dream of becoming an idol. However, entertainment agencies reject her after learning about her past, and she ends up working at a bar. There, working as a bartender Ai feels defeated, but whenever idols appear on television, she lip-syncs and performs along, unable to let go of her dream.
Meanwhile, tragedy strikes Dr. Wada’s clinic when a patient dies on the operating table. The detective becomes more aggressive and launches a formal investigation into the surgery and its circumstances. Wada grows deeply depressed, questioning whether he is truly doing the right thing.
One night, Wada visits Ai at the bar. As his first successful patient, Ai encourages him, saying neither of them has done anything wrong and that they should not regret their choices. She tells him they should both work harder and shine brighter, just as he has once told her. Encouraged, Wada returns to his clinic and continues performing surgeries.
Soon after, another patient dies during an operation further flaring the legal pressure. At the same time, overwhelmed and desperate to save as many people as possible, Wada begins operating nonstop, barely sleeping. To rest, he starts putting himself under anesthesia. One night, he overdoses on it and due to that, passes away.
The news devastates Ai and with other patients of Wada. Ai later tells Aki that she has always wanted to show Dr. Wada how brightly she can shine. Aki comforts her, saying Wada will see her success wherever he is.
Determined to move forward, Ai begins performing more boldly at the bar. Her talent catches the attention of a producer, and she officially starts working as a singer and performer on television. She also enters a beauty pageant for transgender women and eventually wins it.
In the final scene, after her victory, Ai visits Dr. Wada’s grave. She tells him about her success and performs just for him with her former colleagues from the cabaret, asking Wada to watch her shine. With this note This is I ends.
During the credits, real footage of Kenji Onishi, also known as Haruna Ai, of the person on whom the film is based, appears, winning the pageant and being crowned. The closing text also honors the real-life Dr. Wada, stating that he has dedicated his life to providing affordable, gender-affirming surgeries and performed over 600 operations.
This Is I is available for streaming on Netflix.
Edited by Adrija Chakraborty
