'Night Is Short, Walk on Girl' Is a Dazzling, Surreal Anime Film About Youth Life

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?