Mind Game (2004)

 

Mind Game (2004)

4/10

Starring the voices of

Koji Imada

Sayaka Maeda

Takashi Fujii

 

Directed by: Masaaki Yuasa

I saw Mind Game and honestly felt like… hmmm.

One good thing about this movie is, I prefer this to Masaaki Yuasa’s other work Devil Man Cry Baby.

There is a lot happening in this movie, and it is saying everything so loudly, that I kept wondering why it needed over 100 minutes to do it. The message is simple, and you must be blind to miss it. It is saying, you are going to die someday, so act now, live the best life and don’t waste moment.

But here is my question, isn’t every guru saying that?

Almost every blog post or TikTok video has such if you scroll for like 30 minutes, I did not think I needed a whole movie, with a swallowed by a whale thingy to get the same message splashed at me.

Now, the animation, and the psychedelic style I did not like, I know it is intentional, but for me, it was distracting. Same with the voice acting, instead of it pulling me into the story, it pushed me out of it.

The movie follows Nishi, a 20-year-old manga artist who reconnects with his childhood crush Myon. They go to her family’s yakitori shop to hangout when two Yakuza show up, one of them starts to lose it and tries to rape Myon and Nishi freezes in fear and balls up.

This panic action got the attention of the rage maniac, who then shoots Nishi in the backside, and he dies.

It is from here, the movie went on a serious psychedelic visual chaos, when the God character continued to morph and change voices, telling Nishi all is done, head of and be nothing, as you are now dead.

Nishi refuses to be nothing and heads back to earth, escaping God and decided to this time seize the moment. And from here, the movie jumps into absolute chaos, he rescues Myon and together with her sister the three of them get swallowed by a whale and are trapped inside trying to escape. It is Jonah, it is Disney’s Pinocchio, all wrapped in one long stream of madness.

I understand the craft and ambition Masaaki Yuasa is trying to do, but I found myself constantly aware of how strange everything looked and sounded. It felt more like someone tapping my shoulder every five minutes saying, “Hey, look at how artistic I am,” instead of letting me sink into the moment.

This film felt like one message over too much visual noise, or like Bilbo Baggins said, like butter scraped over too much bread.

I think people like to praise Mind Game because it makes them sound niche, made by the same guy who made the nonsense Devil Man Cry Baby.

For me, Mind Game works as a technical showcase and not a film that is supposed to reshape your view of life. I do not recommend it.