The Cinematheque

“A searingly intense mash-up of styles, genres, and narrative techniques … This is bold, almost reckless filmmaking.”

Alex Dudok de Wit, Time Out

One of the most innovative, adrenaline-spiking animated films ever made, Yuasa Masaaki’s cult phenomenon, long unavailable in North America, is a dose of pure, uncut anime extremism! When Nishi, a wimpy 20-year-old manga artist, is murdered after doing nil to stop a footie-obsessed yakuza goon from roughing up his childhood sweetheart—he takes a bullet up the arse and out the noggin, to be exact—the cowardly hero is granted a death-reversing do-over by God. Now, returned to the cheek-clenching moment before his brain-blowing demise, Nishi has a second chance to make things right. Yuasa, adapting an underground manga by Robin Nishi, shuffles a myriad of eye-popping animation styles into every breakneck scene. The story, giddy and strange, feels like it’s mainlined from the imagination of a hyperactive, very hormonal teen. Is it excessive? Probably. Juvenile? Maybe. An aesthetic contact high like no other? Abso-friggin-lutely.

“One of the most fantastically experimental anime features seen stateside. It’s a Superflat cousin to the grown-up cartoon head trips of the ​’60s and ​’70s like Yellow Submarine, Fritz the Cat, or Fantastic Planet.”

Ed Halter, Village Voice

“A tour de force … For anime aficionados, the film is a vision of paradise.”

A.O. Scott, New York Times