Anime Review: Mind Game(2004)

By Aby Yba



It is easy to mash colors together and call it "art". It is also easy to mash words and scenes together and call it a "story" or a "film". Mind Game if anything is an art film, an art anime. I won't stop there. For while it is too easy to call anything art, it is not too easy to answer the question of technique and craft and more importantly the experience.

How was this mashing up done? How was the experience?



Mind Game is a feast for the mind, the eye and the ear. It will leave you wondering: what is happening? What happened? What am I looking at? and yet it is like a painting that though challenges your imagination, does not go overboard, it still leaves room for meaning. If you find no meaning then it is a song, a beat, that while it leaves guessing, leaves you dancing.

Most Anime offer epic battles, epic love stories, weird characters and their counterparts, all of which depend on the advancing of the plot, or the series of connected scenes. And you will judge the whole film on how a clear scene transpired. You will watch most anime/films to know what happened, what will happen.

Mind Game is different. Yes, it has a love story(between the loser and the  usual big boobed girl), it has the adventure narrative, it has car chases, but it is different. Trying to describe the film now is hard. Which means that no words can describe the experience of watching a series of scenes that at first might appear unconnected, but in time appear to be or not? The experience of watching scenes that play out like an MTV. Or of how fantasies/myths and beliefs are squashed together to portray what is possible, how narrative time is bent, is this a flashback? A future event? An imagined event? A dream? Or what?

Sit back, allow the sounds and colors to take care of the rest.

(Myon)

I admit that the movie might just be noise for the casual viewer, the story might prove too simplistic (un lang?) too chaotic (ewan?) but art is the excuse, technique is the reason and experience is the pleasure.

AND if you can watch and appreciate Adventure Time and Spirited Away(said to be the best animated film) then Mind Game should be on your watch list.

It doesn't hurt that the film has a wickedly fine sense of humor.

Some Awards(from wiki): Best Director, Best Film, Best Script and "Visual Accomplishment" (Fantasia Festival Canada)

Further viewing: Spirited Away(2001), Adventure Time(TV Series), Mirror Mask

SPOILER ALERT!

-Has the best portrayal of what could be God.

-Imagine dying by having a gun blast on your butt with the bullet passing thru your rectum until said bullet exits thru your head blasting away your brain.