#87: Genius Party (2007)

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Directors: Various

Screenplay: Yoji Fukuyama, Hideki Futamura, Shôji Kawamori, Mitsuyoshi Takasu, Masaaki Yuasa

Voice Cast: Tomoko Kaneda, Rinko Kikuchi, Kaoru Mizuhara, Lu Ningjuan, Taro Yabe, Yûya Yagira

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

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Genius Party:

Director: Atsuko Fukushima

Known for their innovative, idiosyncratic animation you can forgive Studio 4°C for both creating two anthologies released over two years and calling them both "Genius Party". Befittingly the first segment by Atsuko Fukushima is also called Genius Party.

In a strange sci-fi desert, a birdman finds a living sphere with a soul heart attached to it, leading to a giddy enlightenment where all those involved (including the sphere and its peers) transform in an animation enthusiast's wet dream. Naturally it leads to these creatures inventing cinema, which is hilarious and acts as a long but perfect introduction for any anthology, only matched by Katsuhiro Otomo's humorously misanthropic bookends with added explosions for Robot Carnival (1987).

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Shanghai Dreams:

Director: Shoji Kawamori

Shanghai Dreams, from this beginning, splits Genius Party between two action heavy tales at the start before they become more introspective. Kawamori is definitely a genius before anyone asks, the legendary mecha designer/anime director/screenwriter/visual artist starting whilst a teenager in the industry, and among the anecdotes to him the kind of man at an anime panel in the US gladly demonstrating his craft by bringing intricate versions of his designs made out of Lego as tangible examples. He can also claim, among a large career CV, being the original creator of The Vision of Escaflowne (1996) and being involved with all the legendary Macross franchise baring Macross II (1992).

He decided to set a story in a present day China, with two languages including Japanese used, and envisions an alien invasion that can only be stopped by a distractible five year old boy given the ability to make his imagination real. Its befitting I mentioned Kawamori as someone with a healthy creativity, because it feels like a personal side is being shown here even if this premise doesn't go as you'd expect, a nice anti-climax with humour because giving a very young boy who interested in flights of fantasy isn't necessary the person expected to stop actual alien machinery. It does instead turn into a sweet ode to childhood imagination where the two soldiers from the future involved, with the their cybernetic bodies and guns, sympathise with the boy and the smarter young girl after it all blows over, lamenting and celebrating the idea of imagination that children are capable. Its arguably is one of the best shorts in a strong anthology, both as a sumptuous visual feast and feeling like a sincere creation from a very well regarded veteran.

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Deathtic 4:

Director: Shinji Kimura

Deathtic 4 shows us the world of the undead, where a young ghoul with a trio of super powered but thankless boys attempts attempt to take a living frog back to its world. Its idiosyncratic aesthetic stands out, alongside again being a kinetic short which emphasises a cleverness to action in giving it vibrancy and making every short count as its animated, not always found in live action. The aesthetic details given also invoke a living world with its own logic you wish you could see more of, just for the police force who are the show stealers of the segment, literal person sized balloons who use peddle bikes with bells as their pursuit vehicles.

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Doorbell:

Director: Yoji Fukuyama

Doorbell as with the last segment, whilst they have grown in admiration, do have the unfortunate place of being the most conventional films to an anthology that mainly pushes for very unconventional art styles and structures within them in comparison. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing as Doorbell to its credit, in which a young male is cursed by a doppelganger that, when they reach a person's door first, leaves him an invisible spectre wandering the streets, is still an immensely engaging tale. Its neither merely metaphysical or supernatural, just a very open minded and curious tale open to interpretation whose more conventional art style, bright and calm, is helpful in making sure its tale and emotional depth is of priority.

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Limit Cycle:

Director: Hideki Futamura

Out of all the Genius Party, Futamura's segment is going to be the most divisive. Following a James Dean lookalike, this is a religious/spiritual mosaic in moving form, his life in a futuristic city a deadbeat job, blurred figures passing by and wanton sex with women as he searches for the truth of his existence. With a narrator talking of existential ideas in an oblique way, and with real religious and alchemical symbols and drawings onscreen, Limit Cycle could turn people off easily.

It asks, if you know exactly what everything used or spoken of means, whether it has actual depth or not, but an obvious problem is that religion and especially the alchemist material is subject matter not talked about by many unless you're a scholar (amateur or professional) of this material. It's clearly more deliberate than most anime and with a point, not like the notorious fact that, for all its depth, the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise just used Christian and Judaic references just to look cool. Helping Limit Cycle is that, connecting the images together, it has a cognisant and easy to follow plot - one man finds his spiritual other half, his soul, and then finds God.

The monologue and the symbolism (including the Jewish symbol of the Tree of Life Evangelion has used itself) needs to be decoded, alongside the real life figure God himself is clearly designed as, in particularly as Alchemy is a very unconventional and fascinating choice to have referred; viewed in stereotype as men trying to turn base materials into gold, which many actually tried, it has however been interpreted especially with the Hermetic philosophy (based on the figure who dubbed himself Hermes who influenced alchemy over centuries) to clearly have a spiritual meaning, the transformation to gold a person's spirit rather than a base wealth. That kind of reference doesn't get used a lot, or properly to the actual source materials, so in the middle of Genius Party it's a curious and divisive choice to have done. Because I have some knowledge of this type of material, I'll confess to being the who admires Limit Cycle especially as it's still a visual feast, helped by its New Age score, whilst also recommending viewers to take the segment with a pinch of salt, particularly as I'd argue the narration more than the visual content is the aspect people will struggle with more.

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Happy Machine:

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

After the divisiveness of Limit Cycle, trust Studio 4°C's genius Masaaki Yuasa to steal the entire anthology with Happy Machine, so visibly a metaphor of life and death in a curious tale of a baby who, raised in an artificial nursery with a robot wet nurse, then wanders the alien desert outside and encounters various creatures, all until a circle of life analogy takes place without the Elton John score from The Lion King (1994) being required.

Yuasa's style is clearly his own, but it is difficult to pinpoint why in clear precise detail despite all the work being visibly categorisable as his - he is referenced in lieu of the Superflat movement, and takes styles like cartoon exaggeration and using images of real people for characters amongst his many other idiosyncrasies. The influences he's opened up about (like Yellow Submarine (1968)) are visible in his world here, one with a beloved plant creature who eats all waste alongside denizens who could have cameoed in René Laloux's Fantastic Planet (1973). It stands tall as the best of Genius Party, a tale of a bitter sweetness nonetheless also with gleeful eccentricity that has always been his best trait as a director, someone whose work is legitimately adult in its emotional spectrum but playfully weird. Happy Machine also feels like it was made without breaking a sweat on his part, adding to the aura around him.

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Baby Blue:

Director: Shinichiro Watanabe

In lieu of this, Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe's Baby Blue is unfairly forced to follow it and to end a strong line-up for the entire anthology. It's still a good segment, and in vast contrast to my original review I've grown fonder to it as a result, in which a boy and a girl decide to skip school and travel to a far off beach one day, one in the territory of naturalistic drama.

There is a mountain to climb with a premise like Baby Blue's in lieu to Makoto Shinkai making this type of subject his domain, and high school being a pathological obsession of anime in general nowadays, but it helps Watanabe's is a sweet hearted tale, one with some eccentricity to be allowed in which there's a subplot about a hand grenade of all things, something that in a tale of two people who love each other but are to depart definitely gives this domestic tale an edge with how that goes. It's modesty was what I originally (and unfairly) dismissed it with, when in reality it ends what was an anthology that was for too long difficult to see and now has been a worthwhile experience to finally see.