Cast:
Avu-chan (Inu-Oh), Mirai Moriyama (Tomona), Tasuku Emoto (Ashikaga Yoshimitsu), Kenjiro Tsuda (Inu-Oh's father), and Yutaka Matsushige (Tomona's father)
Directed by Masaaki Yuasa.
Review:
It really can all be about timing. Masaaki Yuasa loved animation from a young age and liked to entertain his kindergarten friends with drawings...and yet he thought his teenage years would change his interests. But he happened to be a teen in the midst of an animation boom in Japan (specifically films such as Space Battleship Yamato) that made it sounded like Japanese animation would be great for adults too that maybe Yuasa could aspire to be in that industry. He thought about pursuing a job as an artist in anime or manga but eventually felt that being an animator might be the way to go. He majored in fine art at Kyushu Sangyo University in oil painting. He stated that he was more of a line drawer/sketcher more than one who could "draw manga-like stuff". At any rate, his first job was with Ajia-do as an in-between animator. Despite having doubts that he should stay on at one point due to his doubts about his abilities within pressure, he kept going and eventually did various work at the studio from key animations to storyboarding on programs such as Chibi Maruko-chan (1990) and Crayon Shin-chan (1992). He became a director on an OVA series with Anime Rakugo Kan that same year and spent the next few years as a freelance animator before being asked to work on an adaptation of the manga Mind Game, which became his first feature film in 2004 that has a cult following. Among his various works in television, he also co-created the studio Science SARU that combines hand-drawn animation and Flash animation. Inu-Oh (which premiered on the festival circuit in 2021 before general release in May 2022) is his fifth theatrical film, following the wave of films he directed with Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), Lu Over the Wall (2017), and Ride Your Wave (2019).
Inu-Oh just happened to be one of those films I glanced on a Walmart shelf a few months ago and decided, sure, save it for sometime in the future to view. Once upon a time, The Tale of the Heike told of the clans that lived and died in the ultimate battle for power in Japan that saw the Heike fall to the Genji. In 2017, Hideo Furukawa wrote a novel called Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh. Incidentally, not much is really known of the actual Inu-Oh as a performer besides being noted as having performed for the shogun that has no surviving works.* Yuasa stated the film was one that "portrays weak people", one where the great things will just be dust before the wind, where love and power will be remembered and so on. It has been noted that while it isn't a historical movie about the Muromachi period (roughly belonging to 1336 to 1573), Yuasa wanted to get a glimpse of it with the habits that arose from those times to surround the friendship he wanted to show. You'll see and hear plenty with this film, one that sees at attempt at unity through the demands of order alongside the introduction of its musical talents before the film is half-way through its 98-minute runtime. The story (no, don't think about the sword that blinds somebody) is not exactly as important as it sounds when it comes to setting up its songs and vivid animation. In the beige (or gray) skies, a flourish for performances does stick out, although the design of Inu-Oh (one that sees him shift his limbs gradually throughout the film). Yuasa wanted to make a movie where you could see moves like Michael Jackson to go along with the grooves of acid rock that could astonish in its exaggerated matter because why not? The shows seen in terms of their execution is pretty entertaining. The flights of fantasy go hand in hand with that bond of kinship that is actually pretty interesting. It isn't so much a movie packed with high-tension acting from Avu-chan (lead vocalist/songwriter for Queen Bee) or Moriyama but what they do contribute is in the framing of the music as a team. There is just something about how they interact and how they play with the music that is engaging to remind one that history can be elevated (or taken away) by the way it is presented. Naturally, there is an inevitability within authority and conformity that only makes its resolution all the more interesting in saying that even though all (icon or martyr) will be washed away by the shores of time, at least there was a chance for one to try and reach an audience, and for some that might just be enough. As a whole, it is a visual and audio treat in terms of its experience more than anything, but Yuasa and company made a pretty good film here that is worth giving some time to.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Welcome to Movie Night: Season XVI and the fifth edition of New Directors Month for January. Yes, even with over 1,300 directors featured in fifteen years, it always seems like a good idea to branch out for different experiences, so let's see what we find in January. Previous starters of the tradition include 2022 (Blind Husbands), 2023 (Hell or High Water), 2024 (Metropolis [2001]), 2025 (Alice in the Cities).
*Incidentally, months before Inu-Oh was released in theaters, Science SARU was behind a net animation adaptation of Furukawa's 2016 translation of The Tale of the Heike for streaming/TV.
