Second viewing gives me an even greater appreciation for this film’s construction; it’s beautifully assembled, with some meaningful transitions and juxtapositions that I missed the first time around. And, it’s still gutting: a film about cycles of violence, about the sins of fathers being passed down to their sons. Maybe, just maybe, it sheds light on the possibility for those cycles to be broken.

Really a strange and appealing energy to this one— it’s bruisingly grim and harsh, yet at the same time oddly buoyant, at times even silly. And of course: It’s got some terrific parades.

Like Grave of Fireflies, this is a story that had to be told through animation— else, it might be unbearable. And like The Secret of Kells, it uses multiple vocabularies of imagery and color to address different worlds and realities. What strikes me most is how acquainted each character is with cycles of violence— some internalizing brutality, others daring to dream of something different.