Today I’m of the opinion that Kemonozume is where it’s at for Maasaki Yuasa and, it’s psychotic Ooba here who’s the star turn, summing up as he does the perfect balance between visceral amusement and confounding idiosyncrasy.

In particular it’s the way the generic action-show premise supports the flights of fancy (and brutality). I say premise, but that’s not really right. More than the premise, it’s the character relationships: the love quadrangle, the intergenerational shit, the jealousies and revenges. When Kemonozume flies off the hook and when it’s characters fly off their psychological hooks (they really do), shit goes down in such a way that Yuasa never needs to slow the pace to explain what he’s doing. Because the basis for everything is so… basic, it’s hard to get left behind. We all know this kind of hero, this kind of villain. Even if we’re never seen one quite like this.