Mind Game is a film best experienced first hand and not via the text of a review. No words can truly do justice to this kaleidoscopic and phantasmagorical head fuck of a movie. The plot concerns a manga artist, hopelessly in love with his childhood sweetheart and killed by a bullet shot through his sphincter and exploded out of his brain. Yet this is not the end of the story but merely the beginning as God, an ever-changing illusion, grants him the chance to return to our mortal realm and live without regret. Mind Game at its most basic level is a story about the power of love and living for the moment, yet the execution of this message is…

A transformative celebration of the animated medium. I could easily call Mind Game the greatest of anime films, if only it weren't for the moments of questionable female portrayal (Myon's sexual objectification, in specific), which are, unfortunately, all too prevalent in the majority of anime. The film doesn't shy away from sexuality or perversion by any means-- if anything, it wholly embraces its erotic impulses in scenes like Nishi and Myon's act of sex-as-metamorphosis and Yan's body-paint performance art. Which makes the instances of anime's juvenile staples--huge bouncy breasts, up-skirt shots, etc.--stand out all the more.

In spite of that issue, Masaaki Yuasa is undoubtedly the most important figure working in anime today, with Mind Game currently standing as his…

A transformative celebration of the animated medium. I could easily call Mind Game the greatest of anime films, if only it weren't for the moments of questionable female portrayal (Myon's sexual objectification, in specific), which are, unfortunately, all too prevalent in the majority of anime. The film doesn't shy away from sexuality or perversion by any means-- if anything, it wholly embraces its erotic impulses in scenes like Nishi and Myon's act of sex-as-metamorphosis and Yan's body-paint performance art. Which makes the instances of anime's juvenile staples--huge bouncy breasts, up-skirt shots, etc.--stand out all the more.

In spite of that issue, Masaaki Yuasa is undoubtedly the most important figure working in anime today, with Mind Game currently standing as his…

This is a very different but interesting anime movie, I am very glad I watched this.

There are many different animation styles used in this movie, from sketchy to realistic to cartoony and much else. They give this story a surrealistic feel. It took me a while to get used to it, but once I got into the rythm I was fine with it. I do prefer something like Paprika where the style serves the story. But there is a sequence in Heaven where style does server the story.

The story starts with Nishi dying in a bar, killed by a yakuza. In Heaven though he manages to escape and come back to life. He then runs from the Yakuza…

He visto películas absurdas que son unas verdaderas joyas y he visto también algunas que son una pérdida de tiempo, en este caso no es la una ni la otra (aunque quizá se acerca más a la primera opción). Es cierto que tiene un montón de cosas sobresalientes; hay algunas secuencias brutales (la del asesinato es increíble), visualmente tiene momentos sublimes (el viaje al Cielo, por ejemplo) y además incorpora de manera intercalada y sin una razón definida diferentes tipos de animación de manera innovadora, todo esto resultando en una experiencia maravillosamente incomparable. Sin embargo, gran parte de la película sentí que no me había adentrado por completo en la historia y creo que nunca lo hice realmente, nunca llegué…