I know we've talked several times in the last like, two weeks about anime that involve
people's anuses, but trust me this is.....it gets better!
Usually when you go to see a film by any particular creator, you might know what to expect.
Creatives, in general, have a style they like to lean on in many cases and chances are that
if you like one film by them, then the rest will also peak your interest.
The films and work of Masaaki Yuasa I would not say follow that same trend.
While if you look at his work as a whole you can find similarities between the different projects,
the style and the content of his works change drastically from project to project.
He’s a rare kind of filmmaker who’s not normally bound by traditional limitations
of others in his field.
He doesn’t seem to have any limitations on what animation is or what it can be, which
allows him to create works that are hard to describe in simple fashion.
This makes him a combination of both niche and unmarketable.
It’s hard to ever really recommend his work to people.
We keep trying, of course.
There are several projects he’s directed that I have lovingly mentioned to friends
that they should watch when his name is brought up.
And heck, most people I know have been praising his recent work on Devilman Crybaby, and it
was even highlighted as anime of the year at Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards.
Of course, that’s the same award show where he won best director, an award presented by
some idiot who doesn’t know how to do a proper Kotaro Tatsumi cosplay.
YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE THE SLEEVES AS SLEEVES!
IT'S NOT WHAT HE DOES!
Freaking Philistine…
So it would be easy enough to just lean back with a glass of fine scotch and say, “Well,
he’s just an artiste” and call it a day.
But, since I haven’t yet, I wanted to actually take a bit of a gander at his filmography
to see how he’s changed a bit over the years, and more importantly to showcase his particular
way of doing things and why his work is so enjoyable.
So ladies, gentlemen, and others, my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection we
are taking a brief look into the history of Masaaki Yuasa and his films.
Let’s jam.
So where’s the best place to start?
Where it all began!
Mindgame is a film that is both surprisingly simple in narrative, while also being – and
I know this might sound contradictory – incredibly complex.
It follows the story of a young man Nishi, who after being unable to save his childhood
friend from a bunch of gangsters gets shot in the ass and sent to the afterlife.
Despite being told by a being referred to as god that all that’s left for him to do
is walk towards the end and disappear, Nishi is driven by a desire to no longer be the
wimp that he has been his entire life and runs like hell in the other direction.
And, in a way, he never stops running for the rest of the film.
Yuasa has stated in interviews before that one of his many inspirations over the years
has been, among many other things, the 1968 film Yellow Submarine.
Mindgame, more than his other works I feel, is where that inspiration shines through.
Many of the events in this film don’t make logical sense, and they aren’t supposed to.
You could cut out over half this film and it wouldn’t harm the narrative that’s
loosely strung together over its 103 minute runtime.
But watching the base narrative is really not the purpose of this film.
It’s an experience more than anything else.
The animation style is never constant, starting off with what could almost be described as
chicken scratch, then mixed with live action photos plastered on 3D shaped faces. Then
there are larger and more real 3D models, and entire sequences that look like they might not have bothered
with a key animator if this were a lesser production.
Yuasa has said on multiple occasions that, “I originally thought that if I made something
I found interesting myself, everyone else would find it interesting too, but I discovered
that often wasn’t the case.”
Mindgame is an example of this.
As much as it has over the years since its release in 2004 become a cult classic, even
beating out the Miyazaki film Howl’s Moving Castle for several animation awards that year, the film
just didn’t connect with an extremely large audience.
Even today, it’s an extremely odd film, but really there’s still nothing else like it.
Following up from Mindgame we now lead into the next little era of his work.
IN TELEVISION!
and we are only going to be talking about this briefly because I did mention before that I only really planned
to talk about his theatrical works here today.
Because otherwise we could be here all day. It is still worth mentioning that in
the years between Mindgame and his next theatrical feature he didn’t just disappear into the
wilds. Far from it.
Even if it might have looked that way from a western viewpoint.
Because we didn't get much of what he did.
This instead was the time he spent on the small screen.
He directed works such as Kaiba in 2008, Tatami Galaxy in 2010, Ping Pong in 2014, and of
course the recent Netflix exclusive Devilman Crybaby in 2018.
All of that interspersed with working both in the east and west, with animation
in Samurai Champloo, as well as directing episodes of Space Dandy and a particularly
memorable episode of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time.
Despite the critical success of Mindgame, it was still his debut work as a director
and as such he wanted to further experiment and develop his directing style, which working
in television allowed him to do.
The key work I wanted to focus on before we moved back to the theatrical
was the series Tatami Galaxy, since for me this was my first big
exposure to his work following Mindgame.
It’s been hard to recommend the series both because of its abstract content
But outside his theatrical work, it’s the project of his that I most enjoyed watching.
I’ll probably have to do a video on the series explaining exactly why you should watch it.
But until that time, know that it exists, I love it, and if we weren’t trying to be
a bit more concise with this video, I’d probably dedicate a whole gigantic section
just to Tatami Galaxy alone.
However, I’m not, so we are moving on.
We now jump ahead to 2017.
After many years of staying out of the theatrical realm, Yuasa moves forward with not one, but
TWO brand new theatrical films.
The first is a bit more familiar ground.
Wait, did I say just not say that we weren't going to be talking about Tatami Galaxy?
I lied.
Really, this is more of an addition or a sidestep, as "Night is Short, Walk on Girl" is a somewhat
spiritual sequel to Tatami Galaxy than anything else.
You obviously don’t need to have seen Tatami to enjoy or understand what’s going on here,
though again, watch Tatami Galaxy.
Because it is great and you should.
The film itself is split into multiple different plotlines that apparently all occur on the
same night in sequential order.
A young man is desperately trying to figure out a non-embarrassing way to confess his
feelings to his kohai, though so far the best he’s been able to do is,
to the casual observer, come off as as a bit of stalker.
He constantly runs into her so that she might start thinking that their meeting up
Was not coincidence, or some plan by him, but in fact FATE.
Unfortunately for him, she has quite a few other things on her mind.
Well that and luck really isn’t with him on this night, and the vast majority of the
film has them separated due to a variety of circumstances.
The Kohai herself spends most of the film on a kind of upbeat adventure through the
town.
Meeting new people, trying new experiences, and generally living the best life possible
while helping out whomever she can on the way.
From having a drink off with a local supernatural being, performing in a travelling theatre
play for the local university, and nursing the entire town back to health when a very
nasty sickness begins to spread.
If all you were to do is look solely at Yuasa’s filmography, you might begin to notice a bit
of a pattern with his work, but also a remarkable improvement.
Much of his work utilizes animation in very nonsensical ways.
A lot of things like to happen on screen and, by and large, not a lot of it makes much sense
out of context.
This is especially the case for Mindgame.
But here with Night is Short, there’s a lot more consistency with the ideas presented
and how the film is split up.
It’s easier to notice that a lot of what seems to be nonsensical really isn’t if
you just take a moment to pause and see why things are happening.
It’s very easy for an artist to design and showcase crazy and insane imagery for a variety
of reasons, and while they can be impressive from either an artistic or generally creative
perspective, having a kind of meaning behind it goes a long way.
Now, of course, it’s sometimes hard to identify whether or not an artist actually had any
particular meaning behind their work, especially if they never tell you or describe it after
the fact.
It’s very easy for us the audience to instead identify our own interpretation of the work
and assume that was the meaning all along, which I’m sure some artists use to their
benefit.
But in the case of Yuasa’s work, he’s the kind of artist that uses crazy imagery
for the obvious benefit of the characters’ development and the overall narrative as a
whole.
It’s not crazy for the sake of the crazy, but it’s crazy because life is crazy, the
universe is crazy, and sometimes crazy is the best way to showcase what exactly is happening
in these characters’ lives.
This is why his work has become cult classics over the years, and why the characters he
brings to life feel like they have so much depth to them, even when we don’t have a
lot of time spent with them.
Which brings us to his most recent film, Lu Over the Wall.
Out of all the films that I’ve mentioned today, I’d have to say that this is probably
the cleanest cut.
Not that it doesn’t have the same Yuasa flare to it, of course.
The narrative is easy enough to follow.
It’s a new take on a Little Mermaid type story, with a young boy Kai meeting a curious
mermaid girl Lu.
Through the music that they and their friends make, they attempt to reintroduce Lu and the
world of the merfolk to this little fishing town that has legends devoted to fearing mermaids.
Due to misunderstandings and other narrative obstacles, tensions build that Kai and Lu
have to overcome.
and that's more or less the crux and the jist of the story.
There have been many comparisons made to the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo, and it’s not surprising
given the style of animation usually present when Lu is on screen.
and it's not necessarily an inaccurate comparison.
Though the narrative is far more simple and easy to follow, than Yuasa's usual works
The good parts of the film are still the characters, and specifically how the animation is used to
further develop them rather than letting the dialogue do all the talking.
And heck, a decent chunk of the animation for this film in particular was done in Flash.
Like I know the use of flash in proper productions has been a thing for a good while, but to
see it done this well in this kind of production is both impressive and inspiring.
The reason why I really enjoy watching all of Yuasa’s work is because his animation,
unlike many of his peers, makes me feel like I’m truly watching a waking dream.
When you dream, things can happen, things that your waking mind can’t explain.
Locations blend, people pop out of nowhere, and situations can occur that when you think
about it the following morning don’t make all that much sense.
But in the moment, when you are experiencing that dream, everything fits.
Everything makes perfect sense and everything is understood, despite how weird it all is.
In that moment.
and watching one of Yuasa's films is like living in that experience.
There is no sudden moment or time that occurs where the memory
of that dream, the understanding of it, fades into nothingness.
These dream-like experiences that Yuasa shares with us are things we will keep far into the
future, for the hopeful benefit of our own lives.
I won't say that Masaaki Yuasa is the best director. I won't say that he's the most influential, or even
the one that we should keep tabs on.
I will only say that he has a very particular kind of animation that he brings to the table,
One that nobody else is doing, and possibly, nobody else can do quite like him.
So that’ll be it for this very brief work into the filmography of Masaaki Yuasa, I hope
you enjoyed.
Very special thank you to our good friends over at GKIDS for sponsoring this video, as
they are also the North American Licencor for several of Yuasa’s films and you can
pick up a bunch of those films from them.
Lastly, a very special thank you to my patrons, who not only support my work in general, but
who also allow me to do what I do.
I love and appreciate you all.
Specifically though, as I like to do, I want to give particular shout-outs to patrons Ryefan
Boneapart, Rune Jachobson, Joshua Garcia, Calhoonboy, and Siri Yamiko for being especially
awesome.
You guys are great!
And until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – watch more anime…and stay
frosty.