The Animated World is a regular feature spotlighting animation from around the globe.
Inu-Oh (2021).
Something strange happens when you watch a film by Masaaki Yuasa. Something strange in the film, and something strange in your mind. It happens on the surface and in the depths, and it works its way from the movements of the film out into the world. It partakes deeply of both Eastern and Western traditions in art, drama, and film—seeming to pull from everywhere while maintaining a focused center. The experience brings to mind Anthony Bourdain’s meditations on his first trip to Tokyo, which he described as transformative, powerful, and violent: “A window opens up into a whole new thing and you think, what does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now?” In Yuasa’s new film, Inu-Oh, this window opens up from the perspective of its two main characters—14th-century musicians who dress like 1970s glam rockers: one who sees the world through a hole in the mask he wears because others are afraid to look at him, and the other who is blinded by a sword and sees the world as color and movement freed from shape. It reminds me of the first time I saw a Noh production in Tokyo. It was as if my understanding of time had been completely altered—as if I had never really known what time was. The glacial pacing, incredibly disciplined movements, and unearthly music of Noh revealed a world I had not known existed. Like Bourdain, I thought: What do I do now?
Dive in again was what I came up with: ride the wave. Unsurprisingly, that imperative is the title of one of Yuasa’s films. Ride Your Wave (2019) is a whimsical, melancholic look at painful loss and the will to survive. The story follows surfer Hinako, who falls in love with firefighter Minato. It is a deep love, and his sudden death while saving someone from drowning feels unbearable to her until she sees his spirit floating in water. She rolls with this bizarre apparition and takes to carrying him on her back, sloshing around in a giant plastic porpoise toy—a ridiculously wonderful externalization of the way people carry loss with them. This ability to see and agree to the miraculous in life is key to Yuasa’s films. Riding the waves of fantastical reality requires precise attention, wild creativity, and firm commitment. There is always a moment in his films when experiences—even those seemingly as impervious as death—must be questioned and transformed. Once Hinako and Minato (and we) accept that love transcends death, it becomes obvious that water need not be bound by the laws of physics either. What is quite spectacular in Yuasa’s animation is that he actually enacts the oft-invoked platitude that animation can do anything. If it can, why do so many big studios insist on reinventing the wheel of realism? Why make animated hair look like real hair if one can instead make hair look like not-hair? This is a question that Yuasa thankfully never asks. He just assumes that ignoring the laws of physics should be done whenever it feels right. Ride the wave.
Ride Your Wave (2019).
Masaaki Yuasa exploded onto the animation scene with this attitude in his first feature film, Mind Game (2004). Much like the characters in that movie joyfully burst forth from the jaws of a whale after seemingly endless paddling, Yuasa’s brilliance shone unequivocally at the helm of that stunning psychedelic romp after years of animating for others. While his talent and style were already visible as animation director and writer for the uncanny cult classic Cat Soup (2001), Mind Game immediately garnered him devoted fans. Like Ride Your Wave, Mind Game pushes back against the finality of death and the prison house of choice, imagining what else might happen if you want it enough. A postmodern masterpiece, Mind Game is full to the brim with non-linear storytelling, visual pastiche, a mixture of animated and live-action imagery, and mind-bending speculation on the meaning of life: a real joy ride. The first few minutes of the film feature an inexplicable series of images that nonetheless provide an enticing entry into what becomes a love story and exploration of self. This front-loading of the film’s key images is like opening a box of puzzle pieces—fragments that appear singular will eventually fit together to form a total picture. Yet unlike puzzles, these images retain a special resonance when seen on their own.
The variable animation style alone is worthy of critical focus, as the constant shifting never detracts from the overall coherence of the film. Yuasa’s tendency for excess and inclusion—and his ability to integrate so many visual designs—speaks to an adept, voluptuous sensibility that is rare amongst filmmakers. Ranging from the delicate illustration of blushing faces to bold color blocking and abstract splashes of paint, Mind Game messes with us, and it’s a blast. Yuasa even dares to depict god (visualized as a swiftly shifting vortex of representational excess) and one with a sense of humor who not only is on a date, but is late for it as well. At the heart of the film, four people struggle to figure out who they are and what their place is in the universe. They undergo both existential crises and exuberant pleasure in the belly of a whale, coming to the conclusion that life should be celebrated in all its incredible variety, even in the midst of profound absurdity. The irreverent fun of the film rests on Yuasa’s ability to balance earnest desire with jest—allowing even the cynical to reread disaster as an epic journey in the making. For example, upon finding himself trapped in a whale, the hapless Nishi exclaims: “Let’s go swimming!” Saturated with vibrant colors, acid tones, ludicrous creatures, and irrepressible humor, the film imbibes the possibilities of visual design as well as a multitude of potential realities, none of which is fully explored or explained. But this much is clear from the film: the future is unknowable, contingent, and…unbelievably precious.
Mind Game (2004).
Yuasa’s unique approach to animation was firmly established with this film: fluid—even transgressive—movement, distinctive color, maximalist visual design, eclectic influences, a penchant for multiplicity and hybridity, a taste for the strange and miraculous. Since then, Yuasa has become one of the most creative and versatile film auteurs in the world. With work ranging from the sweet and whimsical (Lu Over the Wall, 2017) to the brutal and gory (Devilman Crybaby, 2018), he is a true bricoleur, and his movies are masterclasses in how to be open to all animation has to offer, while remaining utterly focused. To bring the conversation back to Noh theater—the subject of Inu-Oh—Yuasa’s distinctive style and effect is the result of privileging art over emotion, a technique practiced in Noh. Legendary author Natsume Soseki outlined how this worked in his 1906 novel Kusamakura: “what we experience in these plays is the effect of three parts human feeling to seven parts art. The pleasure we gain from a Noh play springs not from any skill at presenting the raw human feelings of the everyday world but from clothing feeling ‘as it is’ in layer upon layer of art, and in a kind of slowed serenity of deportment not to be found in the real world.” Raw human feelings in Yuasa’s films do exist under layers of art, and peeling those layers away is the exciting task of his films. Yet, as Inu-oh quips when asked to remove his mask: underneath is just another mask.
The pleasure gained from embracing this approach is immense, even if the process feels odd. The slowly staged revelation of what lies beneath, the almost manic building of tension, the finely crafted intensification of story, the diverging threads of plot and awareness, the variegation of animated style and visual depth—it all culminates in an almost orgasmic release, an epiphany both mental and visceral. All of which to say: Yuasa’s films are a little bit Noh, and a whole lot of rock and roll. Thus, the formal approach is perfectly matched with the subject of Inu-Oh. The story’s two protagonists—Inu-oh (“king of the dogs”) and Tomona—are outsiders who have both been scarred by the abuse of power. Inu-oh is cursed and misshapen when his father makes a deal with a devil to become a famous musician, and Tomona is blinded when he uncovers a sword of power (the lost sword of the Imperial Regalia of Japan) for the shogunate. The two boys meet while learning sarugaku (an early version of Noh) and soon develop their own style together. Tomona, who has trained with a biwa priest, rejects conformity, grows out his hair and begins cross-dressing. Inu-oh discovers that his curse is incrementally lifted when he gives voice to the forgotten stories of lost souls, and he sings and performs his heart out for them. So popular and successful are they in their riveting performances and their unfettered expression of self that a power-hungry shogun soon plots to bring them under his control.
Inu-Oh (2021).
All of which makes Inu-Oh a rock opera the likes of which has not been seen since the 1970s—with the notable exception of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). Like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Tommy (1975), Hair (1979), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and The Wiz (1978), Inu-Oh rewrites narratives of power, authority, and tradition to the rhythms of transgressive rock and roll. Like the damaged, courageous leads of those films, Tomona and Inu-oh play with gender roles and divine aspirations, and fight against social mores as they pound out crowd-pleasing, head-banging paeons to love, pain, and freedom—all while letting their freak flags fly. It’s about time! At the beginning of the film, Tomona’s ghost declares that the story takes place 600 years in the past. This turns out to be 1368 through the 1370s, making the present-day reference 1968-1970s. The significance of the latter years should be immediately obvious, and the glam rock looks and revolutionary spirits of the stars reinforce the connection. That this work resonates with the 1970s is no surprise: rock opera was born out of a need for political change and catharsis, which was often voiced through music, and its relevance remains strong today. Inu-Oh shares the energy, experimentation, and critique of those films, and like Jesus Christ Superstar, performs a similar melding of past and present, even so far as Tomona being a kind of John the Baptist to Inu-oh. This time travel catalyzes the stories, and both remind us that history is opaque: so much is forgotten, whether through chance or intention.
The Japanese history will be unfamiliar to many westerners: Inu-Oh is set during the Muromachi era, or Ashikaga shogunate, which begins in 1336 with Takauji Ashikaga establishing a government in Kyoto, and ends in 1573 with the ousting of the fifteenth shogun. The action of the film takes place during the reign of the third shogun, Yoshimitsu Ashikaga (1368–1394), who worked to further his clan’s control over the nation by promoting the rule of a rival (northern) Emperor to the Imperial (southern) throne. Ashikaga’s political ambition is central to the film, as is the narrative he is trying to control. The Tale of the Heike is a collection of oral tales that were transcribed—a process we see depicted in the film—in 1371. They describe the Genpei War (1180–1185), in which two great clans—the Taira (or Heike) and Minamoto (or Genji)—fought for supremacy. The Minamoto destroyed the Taira at the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura, and formed the Kamakura shogunate, which continued through 1333. The Ashikaga line, moreover, is descended from the Minamoto, and it becomes clear in the film that Yoshimitsu is using The Tale of the Heike to control history, memory, and meaning, and to legitimate his claim to power. Yuasa’s source for the film is Hideo Furukawa’s modern translation of The Tale of the Heike (2016) and its sequel, The Tale of the Heike: Inu-oh (2017), which focuses on the historical figure of Inu-oh: a sarugaku musician famous in his day but forgotten now.
The Tale of the Heike has inspired Japanese literature, art, and film over the centuries, and Furukawa’s story of the little-known Inu-oh adds new depth to that tradition. Yuasa’s style is well-matched with Furukawa’s: both embrace postmodern play in league with a solid understanding of classical works, layering history with freeform aesthetic imagination. In a recent conversation with Yuasa, I asked him about the film and he noted that he found it challenging to tell historical tales because so much diversity of thought is lost as time passes. He solves this in part by foregrounding it as an issue: Inu-Oh tells a forgotten tale, and Inu-oh himself is focused on the stories of the dispossessed. Complex and ambitious, Inu-Oh continues Yuasa’s ongoing exploration of the subversive potential of unusual perspectives. There are two especially unique points-of-view in the film, and Yuasa observed to me that he thought deeply about how someone who cannot see would imagine colors and images. For Tomona this is embodied in a contrast between darkness and luminous shapes—the brightest of which is the fuzzy magenta light that is Inu-oh. It is the truest version of Inu-oh that we see in the film, perhaps: himself without a mask. From Inu-oh’s eyes we see the darkness of his mask surrounding circles of light, peering like telescopes into dappled trees. His vision reveals his character too—he enjoys himself regardless of the darkness of others, curious about the world around him. His personality is embodied perfectly by musician Avu-chan, whose idiosyncratic vocals crystalize Inu-oh’s fantastic performance.
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017).
During our conversation, we also discussed influential films and directors from his youth, and Yuasa recalled loving horror movies as a child, naming in particular Dario Argento and Brian De Palma, as well as older Japanese films about ghosts and yokai. It became clear to me how formative the 1970s were to his aesthetic: the lurid colors of those horror films still evoke deep emotional and visceral responses, and the same can be said of Yuasa’s use of color. Vivid, sensational, haunting, juicy, nostalgic—he uses all the colors of the real and imagined world to speak through a landscape of hue and intensity, harmony and discord. His use of color in The Tatami Galaxy (2010) and The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (2017) is especially magical, ranging from fauvist juxtapositions to delicate pastels, expressing the range of emotions and memories that accompany a “rose-colored” college life. His colors are often bright, pure, enchanting. But Yuasa said his favorites are the fading colors of green, light blue, and brown as in his mesmerizing series Kaiba (2008). Muted and pale, they conjure a disappearing world—the past as viewed through hazy recollections of a childhood that’s gone. Few animators use color so adeptly and so expressively to evoke pleasure as well as loss.
Add to this his depth and scope of visual memory and inspired adaptation, and Yuasa is absolutely one of the scions of early animation, evoking animators from Noburo Ofuji to UPA. He resists realism, refuses banality, and lets older styles ripple through his work like half-remembered dreams. He never mimics, but rather suggests, and one catches a whiff of nostalgia at times that is hard to place: moments, colors, and movements seem to recall images from days gone by. His work embodies surrealism, rubberhose, mid-century modernism, abstraction, art nouveau, caricature, Ukiyo-e prints, and the psychedelics of Yellow Submarine (1968) and Johnny Corncob (1973). The textured trees in The Night Is Short bring to mind the chiyogami papers first used by Noburo Ofuji, and there are hints of Tex Avery, Paul Grimault, Osamu Tezuka, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hayao Miyazaki, Jacques Demy, and others. This subtle maelstrom of referentiality supports his maximalist tendencies well—a kind of smorgasbord of visual design that nonetheless is always, obviously, Masaaki Yuasa. Here is someone who really looks at the world and takes it all in—from the sublime to the ridiculous—understanding that inspiration is everywhere.
Music is another key feature of Yuasa’s movies—a powerful, invigorating, often unifying force. In Inu-Oh it frees lost spirits, in Lu Over the Wall it is an irresistible communal force, and in The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (2017) it helps awkward lovers speak to each other. In an ongoing guerrilla theater production in The Night Is Short called “The Codger of Monte Cristo,” the narrative flow of the film is interrupted to present absurd and delightful musical performances of the characters’ fears and desires. Striking a perfect balance between musical homage and parody, they also exemplify the 7/3 art/emotion split that Soseki attributed to Noh. Emotion is the hidden center of this lark of a film, which follows the adventures of a college student, Otome (the Girl), as she takes on the adult world. Based on a novel by Tomihiko Morimi, the film condenses the events of a year into one long night, with the seasons rushing forward as the characters ramble from a drinking party in Kyoto’s Ponto town, to a book fair, a student festival, and finally the long winter’s night of a lonely heart. Otome breezes along, shadowed by Senpai, the young man who is madly in love with her. It’s simply fun to watch: sundry styles of animation pop with unexpected color and perspective, luminous yellow imitation-imitation brandy—sunshine in a cup—is epically consumed, books are magical objects reviving childhood memories and uniting humanity through their intricate referential circulation.
The Tatami Galaxy (2010).
The world of the film is surprisingly warm—the young comfort the old, philosophy remains relevant, remedies for colds sound delicious (egg sake, coke and ginger, the mythical Junpero), anxiety gives way to courage, and the trials of eating fire nabe end in true love. Human anatomy is hijacked for the sake of humor—exaggerated as in early animation with rubberhose dexterity and Looney Tunes irreverence. But human bodies also transcend isolation through connection: even viruses connect us, and despite Senpai’s fear that his love will make him lose control, in the end he and Otome simply blush like peaches and find the right words to say: how was your night? The Night Is Short was a follow-up to the highly successful series The Tatami Galaxy (2010). With a similar cast of characters navigating college years in Kyoto, the series was even more visually hybrid, structurally complex, playful, and surreal. In this world, Watashi starts his years in college over again and again, living parallel lives, all of which involve crushes on engineering student Akashi. One episode traps him in an endless loop of tatami rooms and the unusual use of stop-motion and rotoscoping make an intriguing intervention in the usual landscape of fantastical color. The proliferation of possibilities reaches its height in this series, which matches so well with the absurdly rich details of Yuasa’s visual design: the nuanced frames deserve multiple viewings.
It’s as if there is simply too much of importance to fit in. It’s an aesthetic of curiosity that permeates Yuasa’s work—from digressions on how to make coffee to optical theories about viewing an eclipse. These everyday details ground the more abstract and surreal parts of the movies; they also teach us something. Yuasa said he practices doing these actions himself while making a film—and as cooking is a hobby, for Ride Your Wave he worked on mastering omurice—a notoriously difficult balance of the raw and the cooked. It is a dish he remembers eating as a child at a movie theater that is now closed, and the care with which it is animated subtly relays the personal attachment. Two of Yuasa’s television series pursue this line of thought at length. Ping Pong the Animation (2014) focuses on competitive ping pong played by a group of young men who spar and bond around their shared passion. And while there are numerous engaging action scenes, the build-up to the final game is constantly interrupted by a mosaic of flashbacks, discursive moments (self-reflection, commentary, conversations) and metaphors, which might distract those who mistakenly think the championship game is the point.
Ping Pong the Animation (2014).
This is what makes his films so distinctive: as the climax builds, Yuasa drills down into the layered truth about moments of action: they are much more than physical, they contain everything that precedes and follows. At a cellular level, each action has a history embedded in it. This diversionary tactic is a transgression against the expectations of action in film—but it reveals what action is and means, and how it can culminate in joy. While Ping Pong provides epiphanies about the nature of action and play, the buoyant Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020) illuminates animation itself. This terrific series is the most enjoyable and educational series ever made about animating. It has Yuasa’s signature style and approach, with the added delight of focusing on craft itself. Set in a high school film club, it combines the character’s flights of fancy with the process of precise technical work. The insights about movement are especially edifying and its self-referentiality is cleverly revealed in the construction of the film club’s logo, which bears a striking resemblance to Science SARU, the studio Yuasa founded in 2013 with Eunyoung Choi.
Yuasa’s work has won many awards in the past two decades, and he will be honored this summer as a Mifa Campus Patron at Annecy International Animation Film Festival. It is nice to see this strangeness being recognized in the world. And perhaps what is strange is really just how rare and creative these films are. Yuasa observed to me: “For animation, I think that there are certain abstract parts of the animator, of the person who is drawing, that go on to live inside the drawn images.” His films teem with myriad forms of life, but for me it is his curiosity about others that truly distinguishes the strange beauty of his work. After all, strangeness is merely one way of naming what is new to us. Yuasa sees, and shares, so many new things—all with a kind of infectious determination to understand and enjoy. What do we do now? How about this advice from Mind Game? “Don’t be a clone, be someone who transcends!”