GENIUS PARTY: BEYOND Review

It's been quite a while now since Studio 4C's [i]Genius Party[/i] collection of animated short films was first announced - nearly two years after its domestic release, retail listings suggest it's finally getting a Western DVD - [i]Genius Party[/i] is set for a R4 release on June 24th. No date yet set for [i]Genius Party: Beyond[/i], the second compilation 4C put out: five pieces of work which didn't make the original lineup, bundled together as one feature-length omnibus. Were these the also-rans, the leftovers, the runners-up or was it just Studio 4C had so much good stuff on their hands they didn't want to spoil us? Find out after the break.

It feels strange to be reminded [i]Fantasia[/i] was a flop: that the film now held up in the public eye as the flagship for an entire avenue of creative expression was pilloried on its release as pretentious and overblown. Given the Mouse House remains a corporation concerned with absolute control over their image first and foremost, the idea they kept tirelessly prompting the public to change their minds – helped largely by Mickey's iconic appearance – is perhaps not that surprising. All the same, it is telling that while Disney persuaded people to accept hippos dancing to Ponchielli as part of Uncle Walt's canon, they couldn't sell the mass-market consumer on the idea of the omnibus feature. Live-action or animated, the collection of short films seems to be almost exclusively the domain of the auteur (Robert Altman, Jim Jarmusch) – often dismissed by the critics ([i]Four Rooms[/i]) or touted more for the roster of big names attached ([i]Paris Je T'Aime[/i], [i]New York Stories[/i]). Animated shorts often fare even worse, waiting until their creator achieves some level of fame, notoriety or celebrity backing before seeing any kind of collective release (The Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer). Pixar's short films have commanded a devoted following for some time now, yet it was still twenty years after [i]Red's Dream[/i] (1987) before the studio released their first collection on DVD and BluRay, and the disc was frequently bundled as a package deal with [i]Ratatouille[/i]. With the Disney marketing machine forever hungry for new intellectual property which which to court the younger generation's pester power, it's hard to imagine Lasseter and company getting behind a portmanteau film rather than a straight-ahead popcorn matinee.

Given Studio 4C were ostensibly "born from the desires of the creators who longed to create what they really wanted to make" it's hardly surprising they've never shied away from giving their animators free rein to explore whatever flights of fancy struck them. Of the three founding members, Koji Morimoto had already directed part of two classic anime omnibus films, [i]Robot Carnival[/i] and [i]Memories[/i], and since the studio was established in 1986 they have produced [url=https://screenanarchy.com/archives/007409.html]a respectable catalogue of short films[/url] the equal of any of their peers; music videos for domestic luminaries (Glay, Ayumi Hamasaki) and Western acts (Linkin Park, The Bluetones); commercials (Nike, Honda) and animated insert sequences. Many were issued as omnibus collections to begin with ([i]Digital Juice[/i], [i]Sweat Punch[/i], [i]Amazing Nuts![/i]). Genius Party was to be their most ambitious project yet; fourteen animators with absolute carte blanche to produce whatever they felt inspired to animate, and no unifying theme beyond the idea of genius unfettered. These fourteen ranged from stalwarts of the industry such as Shoji Kawamori ([i]Macross[/i]) and Shinichiro Watanabe ([i]Cowboy Bebop[/i], [i]Samurai Champloo[/i]) to 'name' talent (Gonzo's Mahiro Maeda and his work for 4C on [i]The Animatrix: Second Renaissance[/i]) and newer, up-and-coming creators like Masaaki Yuasa ([i]Mindgame[/i], [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/a-review-for-masaaki-yuasas-kaiba/][i]Kemonozume[/i], [i]Kaiba[/i][/url]). The first Genius Party compiled seven of their stories; 2008's [i]Genius Party: Beyond[/i] picks up five of the remainder.

The initial reaction to [i]Beyond[/i] is the same as for any other spinoff of an arguably self-contained release; we want more of everything we raved about in the first place, but are we getting a similar standard of material, or just those leftovers which were originally left out of the running time for a reason? Mahiro Maeda's [i]Gala[/i] seems a strange piece to open on with that in mind, given Genius Party opened with Shoji Kawamori's [i]Shanghai Dragon[/i], which – to a stereotypical Western audience – would seem about as 'conventional' as Japanese animation gets. Maeda's taste in aesthetics has always been rooted in the mainstream – even his stint directing Gonzo's [i]Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo[/i] never let that show's endless cascades of psychedelic texture work obscure the central story thread about a young man's coming of age, a sinister evil returned from the depths of space and the spectacle of a Dumas adaptation that finds an excuse to set up a battle to the death between two giant robots. [i]Gala[/i] is engaging and expressive, and seems to suggest it could take its central motif (a remote village in a fantasy world must decide what to do with a titanic meteor fallen from the sky) in any number of different directions – shock and awe, or perhaps mankind's ability to assume the worst of everything. But it never quite manages to convince the viewer this is anything they haven't seen before – Gonzo's own [i]Origin: Spirits of the Past[/i] is a prime example of a blockbuster fantasy filling the screen for the sake of excess and floundering as a result, and the same problem surfaces here. Maeda tries to elevate his section with a resolution giving a nod to Fantasia itself, but can't seem to carry this off; if a filmmaker clearly wants to marry music on screen to music off, it's hard not to feel it's an odd choice to have the on-screen musicians playing completely different instruments to those on the soundtrack. The climax is suitably pyrotechnic and the final big reveal raises a smile but it feels rather pat, overly self-conscious, and the endless concentric spinning mandalas and other faux-Buddhist iconography bring [i]The Second Renaissance[/i] a little too readily to mind.

Kazuto Nakazawa's [i]Moon Drive[/i] continues the general impression of comfortable familiarity. The designer for [i]Samurai Champloo[/i] does little to elevate his story of a hapless gang of bandits on the trail of a legendary treasure; the twisted, bug-eyed cast are too obviously cast in the same mould as Mugen, Jin, Fuu and the rest of Champloo's rogues' gallery, and while the backgrounds teem with incidental detail and some amusing artistic humour they add little to the flow of the piece. Nakazawa gets to use a little more of 4C's trademark marriage of 2D and CG, yet one beautiful, dizzying sweep of the camera towards the end doesn't make up for lazy plotting, too many static viewpoints and some vaguely disturbing sexual humour.

Which makes it all the more ironic that Beyond then turns itself around with the one short film which is blatantly a continuation of something the studio have already done. Tatsuyuki Tanaka originally produced [i]Kin Jin Kitto[/i] for the Digital Juice omnibus in 2001; a young girl on the run from shadowy pursuers through a tumbledown city; a brief scrap of animation barely one minute in length, a short-short film that still managed captivating artistic design and some startlingly proficient CG. Genius Party's [i]Toujin Kit[/i] is to all intents and purposes that same short film expanded to a quarter of an hour – fifteen minutes in which, like Koji Morimoto with [i]Noiseman[/i], Tanaka effortlessly suggests a whole world the studio could set a feature film or even a full-length serial in. Here the heroine seems to be trying to smuggle strange alien lifeforms into a grim, run-down urban milieu, creatures that function as a source of colour and mystery, her efforts threatened by the ever-present Administration. Within its running time [i]Tojin Kit[/i] mixes arthouse convention, blockbuster science fiction, pathos and moral ambiguity where the viewer can let the imagery and the drip-feed of narrative spark their imagination, or simply admire the artistry. The design work and technical mastery builds on [i]Kin Jin Kitto[/i] to fantastic effect and the 'aliens' themselves are simply breathtaking.

Beyond also features the one Genius party short out of those twelve released which breaks almost completely with conventional anime visual tropes. Shinya Ohira's [i]Wanwa[/i] (lit. 'bow-wow' or 'puppy') is a riotous parade of visual invention, a combination of childlike doodling, delicate tissue-paper shapes and sprawling crayon illustrations that twist and distort scale and perspective like little if anything else in the medium. The tale of a very young child's dreamlike adventures while his mother lies in hospital, the endless, freewheeling storybook set-pieces underpinned by a very human concern brings to mind a different spin on Hayao Miyazaki's [i]My Neighbour Totoro[/i] but the backdrops are so consistently awe-inspiring the question of what is or is not real, or if this even matters, never becomes a problem. It seems more than enough that we get something so wildly creative where the thematic content is still so clear and so emotive; Wanwa features plenty of experimentation for its own sake yet unlike [i]Gala[/i] or [i]Moon Drive[/i] it never eclipses the story, such as it is, or suggests it was an afterthought. The way both visuals and direction segue into a child's grief and sense of peril, then back to parental love and gentle pastoralism, never missing a beat, is enough to put most of 4C's competition to shame.

From there it's left to Koji Morimoto to close proceedings on a high note, though even with the bar suddenly raised the veteran animator and director doesn't seem to find this too much of a stretch. If one were to think of each compilation as an album, where the first Genius Party wound down with Shinichiro Watanabe and [i]Baby Blue[/i]'s wistful, melancholy coda Morimoto's [i]Dimension Bomb[/i] stretches Beyond's closing section into a drawn-out rock'n'roll howl, helped by Juno Reactor's pulsing electronic score. One of the most abstract pieces in the project, its minimal dialogue riffs (very loosely) on the relationship between its three young leads, with scattered, disconnected vignettes standing them against a desolate, vaguely Mad Max rural backdrop, towering skyscrapers and cluttered city streets, interspersed with repeating motifs of flight, figures morphing into a primal bolt of energy and back again, forcing their way through nightmarish coils of wire and plenty more besides. Morimoto works in all manner of familiar themes, from character designs that echo the eerie cyborg cast of his music video for Ken Ishii's [i]Extra[/i], to aspects of body-horror, transformation and evolution that seem to draw on his work for the legendary Katsuhiro Otomo ([i]Akira[/i]). It briefly seems an odd way to take the viewer up to the credits, after two shorts with such a strong (if simplistic) narrative element, but Morimoto has such a command of his signature style after this long in the industry that twenty minutes of part stream-of-consciousness, part art exhibition, part concert performance simply fly by.

So after a disappointing opening, then, the second Genius Party roars back to finish in grand style. Far from being the deleted scenes, Beyond is arguably the more impressive compilation on the strength of the latter three shorts alone. [i]Tojin Kit[/i] warrants a movie to itself; after [i]Wanwa[/i] Shinya Ohira should definitely be given something else to fill with those astonishing illustrations and [i]Dimension Bomb[/i] suggests Koji Morimoto could happily spend an hour or more on an 'album' of his own. At the time of writing Genius Party has apparently finally been licensed for a R4 DVD release; the first compilation is set for a R4 release on June 24th, with no date announced as yet for Beyond. The only other available release so far is on Japanese DVD, all versions predictably lacking English subtitles, though unlike the first Genius Party none of Beyond is particularly dialogue-heavy. It bears noting the Japanese collector's edition is a handsome set as extravagant as the [i]Mind Game[/i] Perfect Collector's Box, with three hefty artbooks and a raft of extra Making Of... materials – those with deep pockets may well be tempted regardless.

Not for everyone by its very nature, [i]Genius Party: Beyond[/i] is nonetheless another demonstration of the breadth of talent 4C can call upon, from industry colleagues of long standing to the next generation of Japanese animators – many of whom the studio had a hand in developing. While it arguably fails to dazzle quite as consistently as its cheeky title suggests it should, Beyond is never less than a pleasure and for the majority of its running time this omnibus is a startling display of what the medium can achieve. Anyone with an eye for short film-making, beautifully animated artwork or the playfully bizarre should consider it highly recommended.