GENIUS PARTY DVD Review

1: Genius Party (dir: Atsuko Futushima).

A humanoid creature disguised as a bird attempts to steal ideas from a bunch of round smiley-faced rocks. Or does he implant them in a way? For his interference with one rock leads to a wild exchange between the globes, resulting in the birth of several beautiful creations.

This very first segment serves as an introduction to the whole "Genius Party"-project and does a fine job of it. There is not much of a story here but the visuals are awesome and the artwork is high-quality. A great precursor of what is to come.

2: Shanghai Dragon (dir: Shoji Kawamori).

A snot-nosed little Chinese boy picks up a glowing pencil which fell from space. Whatever the boy draws turns into a real object, but his schoolclass' amazement turns to horror as both boy and pencil are attacked by a huge army of giant robots and their city-sized spaceship... 

This segment is just brilliantly entertaining from start to finish. Director Kawamori parodies his own mecha-background while at the same time providing us with a lovely tribute. His fame is mostly based on super-giant mecha designs (his "Macross" work comes to mind...) and boy, does he give us a nice example here! But the whole segment is also a brilliant send-up of the whole concept, and I just loved it. The snotty nose never fails to gross me out but nevertheless I've already rewatched "Shanghai Dragon" several times.

3: Deathtic 4 (Dir: Shinji Kimura)

Far below the surface of our world, a huge subterranean one exists where undead people live, eat and work just like we do. One day a living frog tumbles into this world and gets found by an undead boy. Together with a band of undead superhero-wannabees the boy tries to get the frog back into our own world, even daring to thwart the huge zombie-police army while doing so!

This segment is quickly described as: Jaw Hits Ground. Hard.

Kimura might be best known for having drawn stunning background visuals for films like "Tekkonkinkreet", but please let someone give him a budget for a full feature and do it fast! The world his segment takes place in is incredibly rich and rewarding, holding the middle between Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the illustrations in "Where the Wild Things Are" (the book, not the film). It is simply gorgeous and the 3D-cgi is unlike anything I've seen before.

4: Doorbell (Dir: Yoji Fukuyama)

A guy splits into multiple versions of himself, and discovers that he is invisible to people if they see his other selves before they see him. After a few nasty discoveries he races to reach the girl he loves before any of "the others" do.

The first segment directed by a non-animator (Fukuyama is a manga artist), "Doorbell" tells its Twilight Zone-style story as a romantic manga. It works up to a point but you never get a sense of why things happen, or what the rules are. As such I never felt anything for the protagonist or felt enthralled by what I was seeing. Just like a real Twilight Zone-episode, in fact...

5: Limit Cycle (Dir: Hideki Futamura)

A man reflects on the subject of humanity, belief, attraction and deity from the position of an all-seeing, all-knowing God.

Good grief. According to director Futamura it might be a good idea to watch his segment while drunk, but I recommend against that. Just to be able to follow what the hell is being discussed takes a big amount of brainpower as Goethe's worldview, chaos theory, medieval alchemy, theology and philosophy get mixed at high speed, accompanied by colorful computer graphics. When images began repeating themselves I sort-of fell asleep, only to jolt awake at the end. I've tried repeat viewings but I keep getting lost around the halfway point. Hypnosis? Epilepsy? Or does my brain shut down when trying to comprehend the incomprehensible? Anyway, this was NOT my cup of tea.

6: Happy Machine (Dir: Masaaki Yuasa)

A baby is raised in a fully automated nursery, but when he is expelled he discovers a strange world outside to have many adventures in.

By now you should be acquainted with the strange visual ramblings of director Masaaki Yuasa (if not, buy "Mindgame" ASAP!). "Happy Machine" carries his signature throughout and gives exactly what you might expect from a "Genius Party" segment: abstract artistry skillfully animated by someone with lots of skill.

7: Baby Blue (Dir: Shinichiro Watanabe)

A teenage boy and girl ditch school, and pool their money to live for day like there is no tomorrow.

Whoah! What happened here? The last segment of this first half of the "Genius Party"-project, "Baby Blue" completely forsakes the realm of the impossible and stays firmly anchored in the present and possible. This is a relatively quiet piece and the artwork is common but beautiful, but director Watanabe nails it. Like a fifteen-minute version of Isao Takahata's "Only Yesterday" it seemingly meanders aimlessly for a while, but like that (brilliant!) movie the emotional sting is in the tail and I was very impressed by the ending, carrying an emotional weight I hadn't expected. Hats off to Watanabe who apparently is even more talented than I already thought... 

Conclusion:

It will come as no surprise that I valued some segments higher than others. After all, is that not the whole point of an anthology? "Genius Party" exposes the viewer to a lot of different talents, some established, some new, most to my liking, some less so.

But the average level of quality is staggeringly high and Studio 4ºC strengthens its reputation as THE single most interesting animation house to watch in Japan, and maybe the world.

If you have any love for animation as a medium of art, I cannot recommend this collection enough.

On to the DVD:

Siren Visual releases "Genius Party" as a two disc set. It is Region 4 encoded (and PAL) so make sure your set can deal with that before buying this. The packaging is a bit odd: one of those flimsy cardboard-and-plastic affairs you'd expect inside a boxset or a slipcase, but not by itself. The only thing keeping it shut is a cardboard wrap which has been glued on it with gum. It's easily removable which also takes care of those ugly rating stamps the Australians use. Problem is, the backside of this wrapper contains some very decent information about the contents. For starters good plot descriptions for each segment and information about each director, none of which is actually replicated anywhere on the discs themselves! So take it off: yes, but throw it away: no. On to the discs...  

The first disc has the seven segments. Video is decent if a bit soft. And oh, how I'd love to have this in true HD...

For audio there is a choice between Japanese stereo and 5.1 soundtracks. There is no English dub, but the subtitles are good.

Disc two has the extras and boy, are we in for a treat.