Mind Game 2004

One of the most unpredictable, complex, brilliant and headily original animated features ever created, Mind Game has been heralded as a major breakthrough in anime, winning awards and critical favour around the globe. Impossible to categorise, this expressionistic new wave film dances from being wildly funny, to arthouse precociousness, to violent neo noir and finally into delirious abstraction. The story starts out simply enough: Nishi is a comic book artist who in the course of one night meets his busty ex-girlfriend and her fiancé, gets involved in a yakuza deal and ends up being shot in the arse. When the bullet rips through him, his soul zooms off and meets with God, who is not what anyone would expect. Nishi decides his life can’t end the ridiculous way it just has, so he turns his back on God and begins to rewrite his life with very unexpected results. When he drives off a bridge into the jaws of a whale, things get really kooky. At times this feels like a throwback to the incredible outré era of such true midnight masterpieces as Eraserhead and El Topo.