Ryōsuke Yoshii works in a small factory from which he soon decides to leave despite the repeated insistence of his boss who promises him an enticing career and fat salaries. However, this is not what attracts Yoshii, who is only perfectly fulfilled when, under the pseudonym of “Ratel,” he sells the most disparate objects on the net. He doesn’t wish for money or goods,  it is the thrill of buying cheaply and selling at a much higher price what he likes,  cleverly swimming in the unpredictable river of supply and demand, sensing where sheer purposeless desire to possess will lead next.“There is so much that I want to buy!” exclaims his girlfriend, Akiko, perfect example of Yoshi potential clients.  
Business is blooming, so he decides to move with Akiko to a much larger place outside the city. He also hires a skillful  and mysterious assistant, Sano, who finds out  that behind Yoshi’s back, who is too engrossed in his business to notice, the net is oozing with messages from “haters” in an escalation of verbal violence that spills over from the immateriality of the net into reality, becoming blind murderous will. 
There is a deep connection between the iconic Pulse (2001) and Cloud (indirectly confirmed by Kurosawa who uses the same name, Ryosuke for both protagonists). In the former, the fear of what the Internet could have been or become takes the form of ghosts who kill in order to live in our world. Twenty-three years later, in Cloud, it is no longer the terror that the Internet could generate monstrous new realities that hold sway, but the horror that “monsters” animated by the worst human emotions: greed, jealousy, paranoia, desire for revenge or power, could find in the Internet the tool to act in reality, endangering our precious, simple right to decide for ourselves what we want for our lives.Cloud is a powerful and disturbing film that only a master such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with his genius for mixing genres, could turn into a gripping and exciting thriller.Teresa Cavina