Dwaeji-ui Wang

School life, with an added unnerving edge rarely seen in fiction. Until the latter stages of The Flowers of Evil's manga, I had thought of it as a sort of fictional suicide note where the normality of life would eventually crush its lead. And the anime amplified that feeling tenfold with the realism added by its rotoscoping (both titles are low-budget yet artistic) and its ambient soundtrack. The execution just gives off a feeling of undefined dread. Flowers and King of Pigs are different and the same. The emptiness and bleak school life is an obvious linking factor but Flowers relied far more on atmosphere and puberty / sex. Pigs doesn't have a sexual edge (all-boy school; younger characters) and, instead, focused heavily on preteen violence. Flowers does have what you could describe as physical bullying by Nakamura, but it's nearly all psychological, where as in Pigs it was more balanced. When you strip away the violence and sexual aspects of the two, what you're left with is a desperate desire to escape the shackles society imposes on children as they grow up and/or enter adolescence. The leads in both series are pushed to breaking point by peer pressure and the need for social conformity. read more 

Nihilism presented as animation. Both are by the same South Korean director & studio, and the themes explored are very similar. Sadly, the animation is limited to stiff (though expressive) low-budget CG. In 'The King of Pigs', two former friends sinking in despair meet for the first time in 15 years and find themselves reminiscing over their middle school experiences. Typically violent Korean school culture (as depicted in fiction, at least!) gets injected with the struggles of trying to rise above a social hierarchy where the rich have free reign to intimidate and abuse those without money. One psycho child temporarily gives hope by fighting against those oppressing others, with the two leads left watching on helplessly as the situation spirals out of control. Thoughtful emptiness is all it leaves you with. 'The Fake' is also about abuse of the poor, but from a different angle: RELIGION. A swindler has an unwilling priest deceive clueless rural folk and steal all of their money, while a horrible excuse for a human (a man that steals from and hits his daughter) happens to be the only person aware it's a scam... yet no-one believes him because of the sort of person he is. Violence and despair follow. Unlike with Pigs, it's hard to sympathise with anyone by the end of Fake, and the change of stance over religion at the end rams home the pointless emptiness of it all. There's very little else like these two titles. Anime is WAY too mainstream for Japanese studios to allow such bleak, unhappy films to be made. There is a film called 'Tatsumi', which adapted numerous short stories from Yoshihiro Tatsumi (the GOD of adult-orientated manga and a master of nihilism) into an animated movie. Unfortunately, because it was done by a Singaporean studio, MAL won't add it to their database. But I STRONGLY suggest looking it up. It's far more anime than Korean CG films, at the very least. read more 

While the plot of both anime may be different, both have a similar tone and deal with disturbing and taboo themes. Both anime have a lot of violence and murder, and focus on characters who have suffered a lot during their childhoods. Both anime have characters with nihilistic views on life, who, in order to survive the violence and torture in their childhood, decide to become "monsters". So, becoming evil (or monster) is a key element in both anime, which is what makes the two similar. 

Violent and gore-filled films that feature heavy uses of 3D CG. Both are dark stories about people being driven to extremes by revenge. 

- 3D animation - Dark and at times gorey, violent - Lots of action, fast paced - Explores themes of social isolation and persecution