#90: Genius Party Beyond (2008)

Directors: Various

Screenplay: Various

Voice Cast: Arata Furuta, Akiko Suzuki, Shôko Takada, Urara Takano

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles.

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Gala (Director: Mahiro Maeda)

From Genius Party (2007) to Genius Party Beyond, a sequel to Studio 4°C's anthology film, and from the beginning I'll confess this is a much weaker work as a sequel than the original prequel. Gala, by Mahiro Maeda, does thankfully start off the anthology well; what feels like a generic fantasy world tale, in which a giant meteorite lands in a high fantasy period Japan where there's a general male protagonist, gets more interesting when he and his allies (a young woman and an anthropomorphic cat) are hired to be magical musicians riding on giant instruments in the sky and enchanting musical compositions to help soothe the meteorite. Descending into everyone bringing their instruments out into a mass orchestra, it becomes a full blown and beautiful cacophony of music and visuals, the closest to a lot of the motifs in the original Genius Party as a result in aesthetic exhaustion.

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Moondrive (Director: Kazuto Nakazawa)

Moondrive's director Kazuto Nakazawa immediately stands out as the man who directed the animated segment of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), one of the most striking moments for anime's recognition in Western culture in the early 2000s. Moondrive looks like the work of the same director only exaggerated even further, a crude farce, set on the moon in the future, about a motley group of thieves whose attempts to find treasure are constantly undercut by pitfalls (no money, losing money in a pool game, the transport not having enough fuel). It's a fun, misanthropic romp, with a distinct visual style although it does have a tasteless running gag which will immediately put many off where one of the two female members, a buxom blonde, is constantly bartered for sexual favours for people by the headstrong male leader who she calls masters. It's a joke, even if one has her audible being a dominatrix for one "client's" masochistic tendencies, which hasn't aged well at all in just a decade.

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Wanwa the Doggy (Director: Shinya Ohira)

Wanwa the Doggy by is definitely the most surreal of the five segments in this film, the fantasies of a young boy as his mother is in labour with a new sibling played out as a nightmarish journey against trolls who've kidnapped her. It evokes Masaki Yuasa's segment from the first Genius Party, notions of death and strange sights from an infant's perspective. Shinya Ohira's short takes a huge risk by making the segment look like a child's drawing in motion, sharp crude images and blocks of colour, It's a style which can became a little bit of an ugly and difficult to grasp in its final version. I have to defend the ambition even if doesn't completely work, although honestly the issue is just that it could've just had a little more pacing in structure to fully work. If that'd been the case, I'd be fully onboard with this ambition being an actual success because it befits what the premise is.

Noticeably with the first three segments, sadly not carried out in the last two, there's always an epilogue which feel meta or pull the rug under the viewer, going on longer than you'd presume in each short but with purpose. I won't spoil Gala's barring it being a circle of life that enters our world, but Moonride's reveals itself as having been a musical production on a red curtained stage with an orchestra, and Wanwa... does soften its flaws when a troll is revealed to be a man in a suit, sad to have not been in the dream we saw, only to be thankful that he got some screen time at the end.

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Toujin Kit (Director: Tatsuyuki Tanaka)

Toujin Kit by Tatsuyuki Tanaka feels unlike the other segments, the most conventionally structure and aesthetically looking but also arguably the best, entering a dystopian world of police enforcers who are literal brains in jars on robot bodies and washed out grey industrial environments are all there is to see. The story simply follows a young woman illegally breeding multi-dimensional organisms within plush toys, giving the toys life as a result, only for law enforcement to crack down on her. Whether they are right to, believing the organisms will damage the dimensional form itself if they don't stop her, or it's a metaphor for the death of imagination is entirely for the viewer's discretion. The biggest surprise is that, expecting a big crescendo, you get an abrupt and bleak ending instead, which argues Toujin Kit is the best segment just for catching you off-guard completely next to everyone else.

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Dimension Bomb (Director: Koji Morimoto)

Sadly Dimension Bomb ends the short anthology on a flat note, more disappointed as its directed by Koji Morimoto, co-founder of Studio 4°C itself and a very good director himself known for stylistic innovation in his work. I'll probably warm to his segment, even understand what exactly it is about, in which you have a slightly spacey but intuitive young woman with powers and a demonic alien being she bonds with, but the immediate problem is that the short's a confusing if beautiful looking creation. Knowing how unconventional Morimoto can be, like with the short Noiseman Sound Insect (1997), the problem's entirely that of being merely confusing than compellingly vague, as well as being aesthetically beautiful in a more conventional way compared to some of his bolder experiments which stood out more.

Ultimately, Genius Party had far more rewarding pieces - as of this review, even Shinichirō Watanabe's Baby Blue (which I unfairly dismissed at first) became so much more stronger and good when thought about. In comparison, Genius Party Beyond feels like the runt of the little, charming but missing a great short in itself. As someone more sympathetic to anthologies than many, I'll warm up to it over time, but its definitely a weaker creation.