This Week in Anime
How Inu-Oh Perfectly Captures Masaaki Yuasa's Work
by Steve Jones & Christopher Farris,
Masaaki Yuasa's latest (and possibly last) anime film is a culmination of his artistic career. Steve and Chris discuss the film's approach to art (and art criticism) and what it means to a transgressive creator.
This movie is available to purchase on Blu-ray and is streaming on digital platforms, including Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
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Steve
Chris, I have just one question: are you ready to ROCK? Biwa-style?
Chris, I have just one question: are you ready to ROCK? Biwa-style?
Chris
I am always down for some extremely historically accurate Muromachi-era rocking and rolling.
I am always down for some extremely historically accurate Muromachi-era rocking and rolling.
Rad, that's the answer I was looking for. Because this week, we're delving into the rockstar rollercoaster ride that is Inu-Oh, the latest—and possibly last!—film from the mind (game) of Masaaki Yuasa.
It's been a long time coming, at least for me. I missed the theatrical showings we got for Inu-Oh last year, so I'd greatly been anticipating it finally being available on streaming. This movie picked up killer word of mouth, magnified more by Yuasa and the Science Saru squad getting snubbed at the awards earlier this month.
Right, this was also my first opportunity to see it, and it certainly did not disappoint! I won't pretend I'm unbiased; I've followed Yuasa's career since Kaiba aired and loved almost everything he's touched. But I'm glad you brought up the awards thing because there's a certain poetry to that with Inu-Oh, which is itself about art, audiences, and the politics of recognition.
Yuasa's no stranger to art about art, a critical smash like Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken demonstrates that well enough. Inu-Oh then piles on more layers, adding a new story to the classic epic The Heike Story, which itself is about how contentious it would be to add new stories onto The Heike Story!
And in a fit of extra meta-irony, Science Saru themselves adapted the classic Heike Story barely a year before Inu-Oh was released!
It might explain all the biwa between them, anyway.
And in a fit of extra meta-irony, Science Saru themselves adapted the classic Heike Story barely a year before Inu-Oh was released!
It might explain all the biwa between them, anyway.
The Heike Story is one of the most important works of classical Japanese literature, so it's not too crazy for there to be two works about it from the same studio in such rapid succession. If anything, it's a rare gift to receive two different yet complementary and confident approaches to the subject matter! Sometimes we even see how the two anime adapt the same scene.
Naoko Yamada homed in on the Heike's fall from power and the fundamental tragedies in their tale of loss, using a more naturalistic approach with the Taira women at its core. Yuasa's anachronistic metatextual angle looks at how The Heike Story as we know it was later cobbled together from oral history—by turning it into a rock opera, naturally.
Naoko Yamada homed in on the Heike's fall from power and the fundamental tragedies in their tale of loss, using a more naturalistic approach with the Taira women at its core. Yuasa's anachronistic metatextual angle looks at how The Heike Story as we know it was later cobbled together from oral history—by turning it into a rock opera, naturally.
There's really a remarkable feeling of restraint with how Yuasa builds up to Inu-Oh's central presentational gimmickry. There are flashes of magical realism and a rapid-fire directorial approach at the beginning. But then, even with actual supernatural curses manifesting and motivating characters, we still feel like we're on a slower, more grounded approach to following leads Tomona and the titular Inu-Oh. Only after building that up for about half an hour does the film reward itself by cutting loose and making you go, "Oh, this is what everyone was talking about with this movie!"
Yuasa's always been assured as a director, and that confidence pays dividends here.
Yuasa's always been assured as a director, and that confidence pays dividends here.
I think there's a temptation to say that Yuasa has "matured" since his madcap Mind Game and Kemonozume days. And I absolutely think he's become a more refined director in that time. The way the film depicts Tomona's blindness, for example, is gorgeous in how it uses color (or its absence) to give shape to sounds.
But Yuasa is also no less playful than in his early days, especially in Inu-Oh. I mean, even before the musical geta drops, the film has so much fun with how much of a funky little guy its titular character is.
But Yuasa is also no less playful than in his early days, especially in Inu-Oh. I mean, even before the musical geta drops, the film has so much fun with how much of a funky little guy its titular character is.
Inu-Oh is a character made for Yuasa and Science Saru's famously loose sensibilities. I love his magical music arm's ability to seemingly be whatever length he wants it to be.
That playfulness serves the movie so well once it gets going. The first rock opera performance that kicks off lasts an astonishing fifteen minutes, then immediately transitions into another one. They all consist of the director and crew messing around with presentational elements, similar to them giving themselves carte blanche to run wild with animation sequences in Eizouken.
That playfulness serves the movie so well once it gets going. The first rock opera performance that kicks off lasts an astonishing fifteen minutes, then immediately transitions into another one. They all consist of the director and crew messing around with presentational elements, similar to them giving themselves carte blanche to run wild with animation sequences in Eizouken.
Nothing puts "performance" and "art" into performance art like a breakdancing neon skeleton shogun. The anachronisms compound delightfully from there, transforming the biwa traditions into pyrotechnics-drenched glam extravaganzas. It's infectious fun.
I don't care that they didn't have colored spotlights in the 14th century. Maybe they should have!
I don't care that they didn't have colored spotlights in the 14th century. Maybe they should have!
It's great because sometimes they take pains to show how Inu-Oh pulls off some of these effects in his nominal Noh shows, like the cutout over the spotlight to create his giant rideable space-whale backdrop.
It lets you feel like these could have been the revolutionary new media the story presents them as, which shakes up the established artistic status quo.
It lets you feel like these could have been the revolutionary new media the story presents them as, which shakes up the established artistic status quo.
This gets into what Inu-Oh is really about: the transgressive power of art. We see the art first as a place of refuge for outcasts like Tomona and Inu-Oh. Art gives them a voice. And it then gives them a vehicle toward greater heights of stardom and personal expression. I particularly like how the film blends real rock and roll history into the mix, as Tomona, for example, uses his fame to explore gender and sexuality more liberally. Also, he just stopped wearing shirts at one point. Good for him.
There's a surprising amount you can read into and dissect about this movie that's 75% musical montages. Tomona chooses new names for himself alongside his evolving experimentation with appearance, which inspires Inu-Oh to do the same with his moniker. And then Inu-Oh's own appearance is one he "grows into" being more publicly acceptable even as the material he and Tomona are putting out becomes more socially disruptive.
Inu-Oh's casting is also pitch-perfect, literally and figuratively. He's voiced by Avu-chan, a real-life rockstar and lead singer of the band QUEEN BEE. Fellow Yuasa-heads might remember their amazing voice from that banging "Devilman no Uta" cover in Devilman Crybaby. They're also openly nonbinary, which slots perfectly into the film's themes about expression and identity.
I would love to believe that at least part of the genesis of this film was Yuasa finishing up collabing with Avu-chan for Devilman Crybaby and then going, "What if I made a movie where they just get to rock out?"
Between the Avu-chan collab and Taiyo Matsumoto (Ping Pong's mangaka) doing the character designs, Inu-Oh feels like a nice exclamation point on Yuasa's career.
It makes me a little extra bitter that Inu-Oh wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award, but I'm past the point of being surprised by the Academy's treatment of anime.
Anime being snubbed by the Oscars is practically a tradition at this point, but it sticks out given the widespread critical accolades Inu-Oh picked up on its release. If I were being cynical, I'd accuse The Academy of simply not "getting it." There was a time when the crew of crusty old codgers loved musically-themed pieces about art and theater itself. And you can't even lay it at the feet of esoterism in a year when Everything Everywhere All At Once picked up Best Picture.
A Best Picture winner that, ironically enough, was inspired in part by Yuasa! The Daniels have explicitly named Mind Game's visual poetry and cohesive anarchy as an influence on how they approached EEAAO, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's seen both lol.
Mind Game was largely about running away from the pressures of organized existence into the belly of a whale where you could find yourself. So one almost questions if Yuasa would really care about The Academy recognizing a film that he clearly made just for himself, like so many of his projects.
Good point. Even within the confines of the anime-sphere, Yuasa's always been a singularly idiosyncratic creative voice. Like, I remember being on 4chan when Kaiba was airing (look, this was a long time ago), and the art style alone was enough to turn a lot of commenters away from it. But for those still drawn to the show, that uniqueness made the connection feel stronger.
Much as the performances in Inu-Oh scarcely resemble actual Noh plays or biwa music, Yuasa has largely been defined by a willingness to shirk what fans traditionally expect "anime" to look like. Even his big breakout mainstream Netflix adaptation of a legacy IP in Devilman Crybaby was noted for its idiosyncratic looks.
And much like Inu-Oh, it was the transgressive, transformative aspects of adapting such a "classic" work that ultimately spoke to many of Devilman Crybaby's themes.
And much like Inu-Oh, it was the transgressive, transformative aspects of adapting such a "classic" work that ultimately spoke to many of Devilman Crybaby's themes.
Especially considering the prevalence of reboots and remakes these days, the ideal blend of reverence towards the original and respect towards one's personal vision should always lean more towards the latter. What often made those original works so beloved in the first place was a creative spirit that bucked trends and blazed trails. For example, that was certainly the case for Go Nagai with Devilman, so Crybaby's approach was, in that respect, true to Nagai's original spirit. And spirit is the quintessence of what makes good, valuable art.
That spirit's always apparent in Yuasa's approach. Stuff like Mind Game and Eizouken work within his personal parlances of drawing and animation. But he loves art and expression of all kinds, be it more conventional creations like the music of Inu-Oh, or particular acts like ping pong or surfing.
And I'm glad Inu-Oh is such a joyous and, ultimately, defiant expression of that attitude, even in the face of political suppression.
As I alluded to discussing it in the context of the Oscar snub, there's a consideration for Inu-Oh's broader point about artistic authority. Tomona and Inu-Oh in the movie meet resistance from all sides of their preferred art forms: Establishment performers who think they should receive accolades and institutions who want to dictate which stories they can tell. In that respect, there's a calculated irony to the anachronistic stylings of the performances, playing into the in-universe assertions that what they're doing isn't "real" biwa or Noh.
You're supposed to hear echoes of the ancient arguments that rock'n'roll wasn't "real" music, or indeed, those forum assertions that what Yuasa does isn't "real" anime.
You're supposed to hear echoes of the ancient arguments that rock'n'roll wasn't "real" music, or indeed, those forum assertions that what Yuasa does isn't "real" anime.
The film also doesn't pull punches about the power of conservatism in the political and social apparatuses. Like, our heroes' stories end in their era with Tomona executed and Inu-Oh's soul ripped out, doomed to historical obscurity, all because the whims of the current shogunate didn't align with their tales of the Heike.
It raises the question of the purpose of accolades and acceptance. You could argue that a story worth telling will always be told regardless of others' efforts to silence it. Inu-Oh was apparently an actual historical guy, but the novel telling his story this movie is based on didn't get written until 2017. Is it enough to resign to simply being ahead of your time, or should you always push forward, as your work might be able to shift the cultural paradigm?
It's a big and difficult question to answer, but ultimately, the film lands in a smaller and more intimate place. To Tomona and Inu-Oh, music and dance were more than a way to speak for the dead, an antidote to a curse, or a vehicle for fame. It was how they met, how they communicated, and how they deepened their relationship. It was, ultimately, how they became true to who they were. And that's something that not even the passing of centuries can take away from them.
It is a heartening conclusion that effectively arrives at the same point I earlier suggested was Yuasa's feeling on the matter: Art created for you and yours first. Your story from the fourteenth century didn't wait to be told until the 2020s; its spirit endured until then. Yuasa's works endure because even if they're not quite mainstream, they still have that appeal you described which speaks to and works for many people. To go back to the Oscars, the victories of Everything Everywhere All At Once weren't celebrated for the trophies' own sake but because so many people outside The Academy already loved that weird, wild film. Best Animated Picture nom or not, Inu-Oh ought to be the same way.
Yeah! It's a great, goofy, and touching film that further cements Yuasa's indelible mark on the medium. And I can't wait to see the future films and anime that share creative DNA with Yuasa's oeuvre.
Whether we get more from Yuasa himself past this will remain to be seen. But even if Inu-Oh does turn out to be his rock opera swan song, it's one hell of a note to go out on. As discussed, it embodies so much of his oeuvre, pet themes, and artistic indulgences. I'm always glad when one of his projects like this or Devilman Crybaby turns out to be a hit with a bigger platform since it means more people might go back through his catalog to check out other stuff like Kaiba or Mind Game. Since, as we all know, that kind of exposure is essential.
Precisely! This brings me to the main point I've wanted to hit on this entire time: Hey! Licensors! Get us some damn Kemonozume Blu-rays already! I don't feel like waiting until the heat death of the universe.
With your luck, you'll have to wait until they make an Oscar-winning film inspired by it.
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