Stalk-like creatures wriggling out of walls. Endless trenches that hide dangers. Half-men, half-robots in fetish wear. Removable eyes. These are just some of the wonders and weirdos that await in Takahide Hori's latest animated film, Junk World. Bizarre, funny, sometimes confusing, always entertaining, it's a feast for the eyes and ears and either a good puzzle or a film for which you will just let any logic go and enjoy the visual feast.
Hori and his team of six animators—a small number that boggles the mind considering the depth and detail of the film—take us back to about 1000 years before the first film Junk Head. Junk World is apparently the middle film of a trilogy, so we can expect to find the origin story. In the meantime, this film tells the story of how humans and clones are meeting to negotiate and truce and possible alliance; they've barely begun, however, when a sadomasochistic cult (in said fetish wear) attack, forcing a few survivors to make a trek through a chasm to an abandoned city. It seems there is some kind of space/time anomaly in this city, and perhaps it is the true objective of the cult.
This cult is made up of Mulligans, robots designed to look like humans and do our labour. The Gyura cult takes it upon themselves to eat humans, and they want Lady Torys, one of the survivors, and a rare human woman specimen. Or is she? She is accompanied by a loyal mulligan, Dante, and her personal robot, Robin. As they encounter monsters of varying sizes, they finally find a portal to another point in time. There emerge creatures who claim to be the descendants of Dante. But a fight ensues, Robin flies into the portal, and another version of the time we've just witnessed happens, with Robin as its God.
I'm probably making it sound more confusing than it is, it's not a narrative that easily translates to a review (and it certainly doesn't have to be). Suffice to say, in a galaxy at war, with humans and mulligans trying to find a way to work together (or possibly vying for supremacy), individual acts of nobility and sacrifice can make the difference against an intractable and insane enemy. What matters is that each layer of this narrative, while possibly absurd, is delightfully so.
What we get is a dizzying tale of fights for justice, training of great warriors, and a lot of quippy one-liners. There's always something lost in translation and I fear that I and anyone else without good knowledge of Japanese culture might miss some terrific references and jokes, but that doesn't stop the enjoyment of the film. Even as the seriousness of the situation mounts, as the timeline resets and we're shown how different parties played their part, there's always time in the script to find the joke or the irony.
We can imagine the set in which the animators worked, moving the various character models inch by inch, and how that act itself helped to construct this elaborate tale, and how the slowness of the process could contribute to fleshing out the world of this film series. It is a human story, about how we all perceive what makes us human (or not), how we might change it, our lust for power or our desire to be loyal to those we love.
Junk World is quite a ride, and even if the story gets complicated, the incredible work of the animators is a marvel to behold, and alone worth the price of admission. It's a showcase of the power of human-led storytelling, imagination, and artistry.