38) Kemonozume (2006)
One of Yuasa's TV series, Kemonozume is an horror/experimental series that is actually very hard to describe. It's a series with an art style typical of Yuasa, but still quite distinct from his other works. The most similar in terms of art style would be perhaps the movie Mind Game (2004). It's also very similar to that film in terms of atmosphere. It's a fantasy but a type of fantasy that feels more like an artistic animated short rather than the typical atmosphere of animated fantasy (for instance, that you get from a movie like Children who Chase Lost Voices).
The plot is pretty brutal, to be blunt, it's strictly adult but not without those elements that make something specially attractive to teenager and young adult males: lots of blood, a bit of gore. The fanservice, as western animation fans call the use of erotic imagery, is pretty controlled and the art style doesn't particularly favor it and the character designs are not very "pretty" to begin with: Yuasa's style can be even called "anti-otaku" because it is diametrically opposed to otaku art style, even when they became increasingly popular among manga artists during the 2000's.
The universe of the series is pretty "weird", since it's a fantasy where there are creatures that look like humans most of the time but have those clawns and feed on humans. There exists a school/clan of samurai in Japan (apparently those creatures might only exist in Japan) which is trained in the arts of how to kill those creatures. So, as it's possible to guess, the plot is, at the beginning, based on a forbidden romance between one of the main members of that samurai clan and one of the flesh eating monsters, which happens to be a woman. Then the plot evolves into something more ambitious as conspiracies involving these two groups (samurai and monsters) are orchestrated by a third party.
It's not one of Yuasa's best works, those are IMO Kaiba (2008) and Ping Pong (2014), but still has the flavor of Yuasa and it is another piece that shows how great an animator Yuasa is, perhaps the greatest animation direction of the 21st century so far.
One of Yuasa's TV series, Kemonozume is an horror/experimental series that is actually very hard to describe. It's a series with an art style typical of Yuasa, but still quite distinct from his other works. The most similar in terms of art style would be perhaps the movie Mind Game (2004). It's also very similar to that film in terms of atmosphere. It's a fantasy but a type of fantasy that feels more like an artistic animated short rather than the typical atmosphere of animated fantasy (for instance, that you get from a movie like Children who Chase Lost Voices).
The plot is pretty brutal, to be blunt, it's strictly adult but not without those elements that make something specially attractive to teenager and young adult males: lots of blood, a bit of gore. The fanservice, as western animation fans call the use of erotic imagery, is pretty controlled and the art style doesn't particularly favor it and the character designs are not very "pretty" to begin with: Yuasa's style can be even called "anti-otaku" because it is diametrically opposed to otaku art style, even when they became increasingly popular among manga artists during the 2000's.
The universe of the series is pretty "weird", since it's a fantasy where there are creatures that look like humans most of the time but have those clawns and feed on humans. There exists a school/clan of samurai in Japan (apparently those creatures might only exist in Japan) which is trained in the arts of how to kill those creatures. So, as it's possible to guess, the plot is, at the beginning, based on a forbidden romance between one of the main members of that samurai clan and one of the flesh eating monsters, which happens to be a woman. Then the plot evolves into something more ambitious as conspiracies involving these two groups (samurai and monsters) are orchestrated by a third party.
It's not one of Yuasa's best works, those are IMO Kaiba (2008) and Ping Pong (2014), but still has the flavor of Yuasa and it is another piece that shows how great an animator Yuasa is, perhaps the greatest animation direction of the 21st century so far.
Last edited by Guaporense; 01-15-16 at 12:04 PM.