Jun 20, 2016
Asura is not the typical kind of anime in that it's more grotesque in delivering a philosophical idea: what does it mean to be human? Are we a product of our environment? These types of themes can be seen in other anime, but this film uses the subject of cannibalism to drive this thought process, which is something I haven't seen done in anime before. During the entire movie, Asura has to face three powerful influences on his character: a monk, who stirs up Asura's fight against his beastly nature; Wakasa, who shows him love that he hadn't known since his mother
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abandoned him, and a lord, who villainizes Asura and confuses his chances on becoming accepted as a human being. All three play a very large role with Asura, but you won't connect with any of these characters. I feel as though you're not supposed to. You're an outsider looking in. Your job is to analyze the situation, and hopefully arrive to a meaningful conclusion. Plus, there's so many conflicts that are thrown at the viewer, I don't see how anyone could consider liking any of the characters. One in particular, the monk, is very interesting, but he only comes in when needed to push the story forward.
This story makes a big deal out of encouraging the viewer to think on whether Asura might just be a young boy trying to survive. Maybe he already is human? Maybe people are inherently good and want to be that way, if their environment will let them? But for me, the film was more of the shortcomings of human nature. Manipulation, lying, hatred, double standards and selfishness. There are plenty of instances where I questioned, why would Wakasa, someone who is literally teaching Asura to love, show the opposite? Or why would the lord be selfish to his own starving people, but instead of the people villainizing the lord, they turn on Asura? There was a lot of foolishness based on human behavior. Seeing Asura's mother abandon him due to starvation twisting her mind, showed me how the environment can sway a person to do things they wouldn't think was morally acceptable, as opposed to how some of the characters purposefully treated Asura and each other. When the credits rolled, I was mostly left feeling frustrated with human decisions.
In terms of the quality of the artwork and sound, it was overall good. I was pretty surprised by the CGI. Usually in anime, it's clunky or ill-fitting, almost as if it's pointless. This CGI seemed more of a mix of 3D and 2D, so there was a bit more fluidity to character movement that made this enjoyable to watch. Great care was put into Asura's facial expressions. There's a scene where Asura has to fight or die, and his facial expressions really helped me to sympathize with him at that time. The sound effects fit the theme, they were odd and jarring. I think they wanted the sounds to be alarming since the nature of the film includes cannibalism. And let's be honest, Asura looks creepy af! Masako Nozawa's voice acting for the character Asura was amazing. She was definitely the most notable out of the cast. Everyone did a good job, but I enjoyed Masako Nozawa the most. Lastly, the background music was very suspenseful. Even though this is supposed to be a philosophical movie, it's still lightweight horror/thriller. So the repetitive bass during one of the fight scenes made me pretty tense.
This is definitely not a film I could recommend to everyone. If you like the macabre with some pretty dark philosophical undertones, then this would be for you. It's not a spectacular anime, especially since it immediately throws the nature vs nurture argument at the viewer. Also, in my opinion, the film tried too hard to encourage the viewer to think about that argument and in doing so, dropped the ball a few times with character influences. Luckily the CGI was pretty interesting and the story moved quickly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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