Mind Game

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Mindgame

Japanese: マインド・ゲーム

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Aug 7, 2004

Producers: Beyond C.

Licensors: GKIDS

Studios: Studio 4°C

Source: Manga

Genres: Adventure, Avant Garde, Award Winning, Comedy, Romance

Themes: Adult Cast, Psychological

Duration: 1 hr. 43 min.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 7.78¹ (scored by 32,100 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1029²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #2277

Members: 86,223

Favorites: 1,130

Available At

Official Site

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Synopsis

After seeing her jump onto a subway at the last second and getting her ankle crushed between the doors, Nishi reconnects with his high school sweetheart, Myon. Nishi is still very much in love with Myon, but is shocked to learn that she is engaged to another man. Nishi agrees to meet Myon's fiancé at her family's Yakitori restaurant, but members of the Yakuza storm the joint and murder Nishi when he tries to stop them from raping Myon.

Nishi, now dead, wakes up and meets a constantly shapeshifting god, who mocks him for dying. The god tells Nishi to walk into a portal and disappear from existence, which Nishi rejects, choosing instead to sprint past the god and reanimate. With a new outlook on life and knowledge of how the Yakuza are going to attack him, Nishi kills one of the Yakuza with his own gun, fleeing in a stolen car with Myon and her sister.

Acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa's debut film, Mind Game's constantly shifting visuals tell a story about living one's life without regrets that is unlike any other.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Edit

Background

The film was awarded the Animation Division Grand Prize at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival. It also won the Oufuji Noburou Award at the 2005 Mainichi Film Awards. Also in 2005 it won the Best Film, Best Director (tying with Survive Style 5 +), Best Script (tying with Survive Style 5 +), Special Award – Visual Accomplishment, and the Audience Award for the Best Animation Film during the Fantasia Festival in Canada.

Edit

Related Anime

Adaptation:

Mind Game

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Nishi

Main

Imada, Koji
Japanese

Myon

Main

Maeda, Sayaka
Japanese

Jii-san

Supporting

Fujii, Takashi
Japanese

Yakuza

Supporting

Nishi, Rintarou
Japanese

Atsu

Supporting

Chuujou, Kenichi
Japanese

Yan

Supporting

Takuma, Seiko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Watanabe, Shinichirou

Producer

Tanaka, Eiko

Producer

Yuasa, Masaaki

Director, Script, Character Design

Fayray

Theme Song Performance

Edit

Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

Edit

Ending Theme

"Saisho de Saigo no Koi" by Fayray

Reviews

Mar 18, 2024

JJ_Wip7

Recommended

"Mind Game" is an expansive journey through the complexities of life, beautifully brought to life through Yuasa's experimental and psychedelic animation. The film delves into the theme of embracing life's endless possibilities, showcasing how even the most insignificant of lives can transform with self-expression. The protagonist, Nishi, initially portrayed as a “loser” with unfulfilled desires and somebody who lived through life in a disassociated manner as expressed by his work of being a mangaka. Nishi embarks on a surreal adventure after a brush with the Japanese mafia. Through twists and turns that take him to heaven, Nishi discovers profound truths about existence and the subjective ...

Open

Gift

Dec 17, 2023

Thebruhhomie

Mixed Feelings

-Mind Game review.-

Do you know that feeling that you get when you are watching a director’s debut film and you just feel exhausted and think that half of the techniques used were unnecessary and a way for the director to show off?

Well, that’s mind game for you.

To be fair, Yuasa had already occupied the chair of “Director” before as episode director for “Rakugo Kan” and director for short films like "Slime Adventures: Yay, the Sea!” among other important creative roles.

But Mind Game was his directorial debut for a feature-length film, and it fucking shows.

The movie is constantly visually stimulating, using ... eye-catching techniques to emphasize every single fucking action that the characters do or events that happen on screen, to the point in which many scenes would have benefited from a more conventional directing approach.

Great directors are able to emphasize and exaggerate actions or moments for the scenes that need it and present other more intimate scenes with subtlety, atmosphere, and quietness. This movie only does the first thing, and the result is a visually exhaustive work in which half of the time I was asking myself: Was this really necessary?

There are a lot of scenes in this film that are technically and creatively really impressive but come out of absolutely nowhere, mean nothing, and are such a waste of time to the point that despite the crazy shit happening on screen, it feels dragged out and boring, like they were only there for Yuasa to show off.

Not only that, but there are some techniques that just look awful or feel cheap. Using real-life photographs for faces while the rest of the shot is animated sounds like a good concept, but in execution, it ends up looking horrible. There is also a weird sequence in which a girl paints herself with paint several times and fucking jumps into a windmill or something weird like that, and they just straight up repeat the same animation with different coloring like 10 times, which of course makes the scene feel boring and repetitive.

I could go on, but the thing is that the whole movie, both story- and presentation-wise, just feels like a first-time director trying his best to impress you with what technically impressive feats he can achieve without really understanding restraint, meaning, pacing, or subtlety.

The final result is a visually interesting mess that feels like a drag, exhaustive, wasted time, and even pretentious.

I give it an okay score because it's still visually interesting at times and because it has the best sex scene ever presented in any audiovisual medium lmao.

Anyways, “Night is short, walk on girl” is still king among the Yuasa works that I have watched until now.

Bye bye.

Thanks for reading.

Open

Gift

Jun 9, 2012

mjharper

Not Recommended

I like arty and pretentious anime as much as the anyone. I think Neon Genesis Evangelion, whose seemingly innocuous mecha beginnings give way to stream-of-consciousness psychoanalyzing, is a high-water mark. Confusing or confused, it's worth it. And I'm a huge fan of Satoshi Kon's work, all of which pushes the limits of anime. I enjoy the challenging stuff.

So when I read several fairly glowing reviews of Mind Game, I was curious. But I'm not sure if we were all watching the same film. Yes, the art and animation are spectacular, shifting between contrasting styles with grace and ease. It's certainly a visual showcase. Yet none ... of the reviews mention the aspects I'm going to talk about below; and I'm inclined to think that beyond the artwork, Mind Game is really just art-house by numbers. Fill in the dots between seemingly edgy elements, and you'll have a great piece of cinema. Or not.

Take the characters. Nishi is a wannabe Manga-artist. Fine. Myon wanted to be a swimmer until her breasts got in the way. Um, fine. The old man prepares gourmet dinners and talks to his friends, the dinosaurs. Whatever. And Yan wants to be a performance artist and likes nothing more that taping balloons to her chest, covering herself with paint, and throwing herself at canvas. While trapped inside a whale. Er… what?

This is all meant to be psychedelic and avant-garde, I suppose. Subtle it isn't. For example: Nishi tells Myon a story about space explorers for whom the only source of food on the planet they were stranded on was alien excrement. But then it turns out that the space explorers were actually on a cell in Myon's body, and they grew larger until being flushed out of her system. You can imagine the details, I'm sure. This charming tale has the inexplicable effect of seducing Myon; I can only suppose that her eyes were so clouded with love that saw in it the unrestrained imagination of her beau, and that the story was meant to have the same effect on the viewer. Personally, I just thought it was tasteless.

Duly seduced, Myon and Nishi have sex. Fortunately, there isn't any nudity, as their bodies dissolve into a kaleidoscope of lines, colours and images. Unfortunately, this sequence resembles nothing so much as a 1969 sketch by Monty Python: trains entering tunnels and then crashing, waves lashing against the shore, that sort of thing. Only in the sketch, we ultimately pan away to reveal an inept guy playing the film to his increasingly frustrated girlfriend. See, the Python sketch is a parody. Which says a lot for the sequence in Mind Game.

It's as if the whole thing is trying too hard to be different, to be absurd, to be psychedelic. Towards the end all four of the main cast pool their resources to escape, rowing as hard as they can through the water-filled stomach of the whale—until their boat is broken. With only the momentum to carry them forward, they use whatever comes their way as leverage to propel them forwards: bits of wood... fish... a fly... Onwards they run, as the whale swallows successively large objects: a ship, an airplane (which explodes behind them), an office block, which Nishi has to navigate his way through, leaping over tables and through windows…

Then finally we see a almost identical stream of images to those which opened the movie, only with slight differences; so whereas at the start Myon caught her foot in the door of an underground train, now she doesn't. This is art-house by numbers again: repeat the same four minutes of footage with minor changes and in so doing give 'meaning' to the changes. What it actually means is not actually the issue; the fact that it's meaningful is all that's important.

In the end, Mind Game is a hodgepodge of highbrow and lowbrow; of comments about breast size and toilet jokes combined with literary references and pseudo-symbolism. Perhaps it wants to exploit the contrast in a kind of cinematic magical realism; but in my view it fails completely. Nothing represents the film better than Yan's paint dancing: it wants to be art, but it's mired in vulgarity.

Bought, watched, and offered for sale on amazon marketplace before I'd even finished it.
__________
Poor; I wish I'd done something better with my time. Its merits are few and far between.

Open

Gift

More stacks

Interest Stacks

Artistic Films with Dramatic Portrayal

by ooReiko

50 Entries · 127 Restacks

Weird bullshit

by abystoma2

46 Entries · 61 Restacks

Aesthetics / Art Direction

by FiviG

50 Entries · 337 Restacks

More recommendations

Recommendations

View All

More news

Recent News

North American Anime & Manga Releases for December

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for December. Week 1: December 5 - 11 Anime Releases Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch (incl. Hangya...read more

Dec 28, 2023 8:44 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (3 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for August

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for August Week 1: August 7 - August 13 Anime releases Black Clover Part 1 Blu-ray & DVD Combo Digimon Adv...read more

Aug 6, 2018 2:33 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (0 comments)

More discussions

Recent Forum Discussion

Best sex scene ever!! Oreki777 - Jul 5, 2021	4 replies	by Zarutaku »» Apr 21, 5:30 AM
Poll: Mind Game Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Beatnik - Jul 22, 2008	94 replies	by Adriannitro »» May 28, 2023 9:28 PM
Do the protagonist end together? theanimefreak95 - Nov 14, 2015	5 replies	by R0ak »» Apr 1, 2018 12:13 AM
Masaaki Yuasa's debut film Mind Game getting a Kickstarter GoldNautilus - Mar 27, 2017	2 replies	by GoldNautilus »» Mar 30, 2017 8:30 PM
Mind Game Kickstarter GoldNautilus - Mar 27, 2017	0 replies	by GoldNautilus »» Mar 27, 2017 5:05 PM

Recent Featured Articles

Top 30 Best Anime Movies of All Time

You think you know anime movies? Have you seen all 30 of these movies on our best anime movie list? Our writer sets themselves a only-one-movie-per-director rule and comes up with 30 movies every anime fan must see.

by 5camp

747,926 views

Collection

15 Bizarre Anime That Make You Wonder 'Wtf Did I Just Watch?'

There's weird, and then there's *really* weird. These anime are so surreal, weird, and downright bizarre that they'll leave you gaping at the screen, wondering "wtf did I just watch!?"

by Littoface

154,763 views

Collection

Mind Game

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime