The romantic comedy anime film Night Is Short, Walk on Girl centers on
a young lady who can hold her drink remarkably well as she spends a long, crazy
night of gate-crashing parties, hunting a favorite book from her childhood in
used bookstores, participating in a guerrilla theater, weathering a literal storm,
and meeting various eccentric people along the way. Meanwhile, her “senpai”, who is secretly in
love with her, plans to confess his feelings to her that night, but he’s
constantly prevented from doing so by hilarious mishaps.
Watching Devilman Crybaby earlier this year properly prepared me for this
movie. It’s because they have the same
director, Masaaki Yuasa. Thus, I was
already used to his unconventional, trippy, minimalistic animation style. And indeed, the visuals of this movie tend to
go batty and dreamlike.
But its animation is only
appropriate with its narrative, which is also quite surreal. There’s a comprehensible story at its core,
true (see the synopsis on the first paragraph), but it’s layered with depictions
of idiosyncratic behaviors, illogical events, and cartoonish physics.
It’s the kind of animated film that
has a “WTF” factor going for it, which will likely leave some audiences
mightily confused. But even those who dislike
it would have to agree that it’s not
boring at all. It’s brimming with originality
and vivaciousness, enough to keep eyeballs glued on it. In addition, it has a good amount of
effective gags that should draw laughs and chuckles.
To sum it up, Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is a dazzling
anime film about youth life. Not only does it
deal with themes that young people experience, but one way of looking at this
movie is that it also serves as a metaphor for being young. And that should explain the wild, breezy, playful,
anything-goes, irrational, and even chaotic nature of its storytelling. For aren’t those inherently youthful qualities?
No comments:
Post a Comment