This year’s animation programme may be modest in size, but teems with rarefied genius; Masaaki Yuasa’s hallucinogenic anime Mind Game the head-splitting pick of the bunch. CALEB STARRENBURG insists the migranes are all worth it.


NARRATIVE loop-topology and a brain ass-kicking of animation styles: Mind Game might just be the best headache you’ll receive this year.

Directed by Japanese anime veteran Yusa Masaaki, and based on the manga by Nishi Robin, Mind Game is as much homage to eye-candy outré cinema of the 1960s – think Yellow Submarine and Fantastic Planet – as it is boundary-effacing insight into the future of animation.

The film’s biblically inferred plot is complex and meandering, yet its kaleidoscopic visuals are exciting and innovative. Mind Game’s protagonist is an aspiring and socially inept manga artist named Nishi, still hopelessly in love with his high school sweetheart. Her name is Myon, and her shapely physique is the source of ongoing discussion – the film juxtaposes its metaphysical ponderings with frequent bawdy and scatological humour.

Nishi is reunited with Myon one evening at her sister’s coffee shop. This reunion is cut short when the artist is shot – in an inopportune orifice – by a soccer-loving yakuza (this bout of football violence seems rather timely given the recent performance of Zinedine Zidane at the World Cup).

Nishi’s soul is catapulted to heaven and confronted by a delightfully unique interpretation of God (a smoking goldfish, amongst other apparitions). Given a second chance at life – and the opportunity to overcome his shyness – a defiant Nishi returns to earth and flees the yakuza with Myon and her sister; the trio finding refuge in the belly of Jonah-esque giant whale – and the friendship of a weathered hermit with sexual fetishes. And then the film gets really weird.

Embracing the immense possibilities of animation, Yusa saunters from ornately realistic to nightmarishly surrealistic, often in the blink of an eye. His eyeball-melting spectacle traverses the complete catalog of visual styles: from phantasmagoric-anime to computer-generated imagery, rough sketches, bold watercolour exposition and live-actor rotoscoping. Images are cut together with the epilepsy-inducing speed of a dance club video show, and propelled by an eclectically rousing musical score.

Amongst Mind Game’s most beguiling visual sequences is its preface: a montage of seemingly abstract images, whose significance is revealed as the feature progresses. The film’s grand finale – a recapitulation of the opening stanza – allows viewers to reassemble the feature in their mind and draw any personal conclusions as to the narrative’s ultimate outcome.

Brilliant and circuitous. Pretentious and low-brow. Avant-garde and nostalgic. All of the above. Mind Game is the most mentally-exhausting, yet rewarding animated feature screening at this year’s festival, and a film that cries out to be seen on the big screen. Bring the panadol.