Mutafukaz

Do you know what the best anime movie of the last couple years is? I'll give you a hint: it's nothing by Makoto Shinkai, the Tyler Perry of anime. It's probably this one.

Let's talk about anime movies for a second. There are three kinds of original anime movies:

A. ghibli
B. Over-produced trashy teen romances for the lowest common denominator that could've been live action
C. The rare, totally stand-alone anime film that dares to take full advantage of the medium and delivers art, animation and story concepts that would've never been possible in a TV series format.

This movie, MFKZ, is solidly in group C. This is a Movie with a bold, capital M, and it's one of my biggest contenders for favorite movie of last year. Not just anime movie, not just animated movie, favorite Movie. It's bold, insane, beautiful, fun and encapsulates everything cool about anime and animation in general. It's fucking awesome. Of course, only like 10 people know it exists.

However, maybe that will change because it's ~ ~ NOW ON NETFLIX ~ ~, and this review is goin' up to tell you why you should watch it like two or eight times.

Let's dig in.

MFKZ is a Japanese movie that is based on a French comic, based heavily around American culture and mythos - There's really nothing else like it, it is a wholly unique experience in this dead-dry industry full of perpetual garbage that's spun off or mutated from other garbage.

The first thing you notice in this weird mishmash of a visual feast is, well, the visuals. If you've seen the trailer, or even any screenshots, you'll notice that this movie doesn't look like anything else out there, except for Tekkonkinkreet, which you likely also haven't seen (but should.) Character designs vary wildly from realistically proportioned to being complete caricatures or talking animals. These designs all do something only animation can do: directly reflect the characters' personalities or just be generally absurd. This is all played completely straight - the main character's best friend has a flaming skull for a head, and this is acknowledged and played up in certain scenes, but there's never any "explanation" - he's just like that. Born that way. The characters' animations reflect their weird designs too. The main characters being like 2ft tall makes them more apt to

The show-stopper here though is the background artwork. Every scene in this movie is beautiful. Every single shot. Close up of dirty bathroom tile? Drawn by God damned Rembrandt. All the time. Every mundane thing is meticulously brought to life and depicted with personality in extreme detail.

And then when it's all combined together, you get one of the most fluidly animated, stylishly directed animated movies of all time. What Into the Spiderverse did for 3DCG movies, this film does for 2D. The ice cream truck chase (yes, correct) sequence alone redefined what I thought was possible in an animated sequence, featuring wild camera shifts, time slowdowns and speedups, and just all-around cooky action.

Next, I guess we can talk about the story. I've had friends and people on forums say to me that the story is confusing. This movie isn't that complicated: it's an action movie. The main kids beat up the bad guys and chase after the girl, it's very Hollywood Blockbuster Action. That summary is definitely a simplification, but MFKZ takes you through a pretty linear chain of events and explains everything to you as it happens. The insane visuals and the fact the movie doesn't spoonfeed this to you is where people are getting hung up. One of the cool things about this film is that the main characters are total losers - destitute, incompetent, weak everymen living in a bad apartment in a bad city. There are several other parties hunting them down and aiding them, and while our main boy is the catalyst for a lot of things, the bigger events that transpire barely involve him. He just gets hit by the dump truck from Sonic Adventure 2 and then dodges lunatics with bullets while fawning over a girl. That's him. Then you have the demons, the mafia hitmen, the scientist, the roaches, the Shakespearian gangman played by the RZA, and the fucking luchadores. They all sort of crash together to make the final act happen, and the main boy is just there, sorting out his literal personal demons, not there to save the world. It's refreshing and everything has a payoff, coming together seamlessly for a strong finale. I've seen much weirder, much worse in movies than this. MFKZ is very tight from start to finish, not a scene or shot is wasted and everything contributes to the narrative.

Last, let's have a look at the audio in this movie. The English voice cast, the only relevant voice cast, is just stellar. This movie was made to be in English, voiced by Americans. You have have a pretty strong who's who of famous TV actors filling out the cast, like villain dude from Breaking Bad and the guy from The Shield. Performances are stellar all around, delivering fun, witty dialogue that feels like real people are talking, rather than the usual Google Translated dub scripts. "Shinohara-san, will you go to the Obenkyo Dojaimazisu with me?" / "Nnn-hn! Y-yes, big brother, I will! It makes me so happy!" - no shit like that, you hear?

The soundtrack and general sound design are quite solid. Not a lot of memorable vocal BGM or anything, but sometimes you'll get an insane dubstep drop beat during an action sequence. Essentially, the sound in the movie is very much design to emphasize the action and mood, rather than be any kind of flashy distraction. It's a good, simple sauce on a complicated dish.

So yeah, go watch it. You probably have a couple months before it's arbitrarily rotated. And then go watch Promare, Lu Over the Wall, Night is Short Walk on Girl, Tekkonkinkreet, the works of Satoshi Kon, and all the other incredible original anime movies you slept on due to Director-san McSparkleskies hogging the spotlight.

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This is a rare opportunity of a life time when you see a film releasing world wide or i mean all theaters in the US, such as imax etc. Overall shout out to gkids who distributed this film. when it to animation and character design in this film which first started from a comic series that i should probably check out but anyways the way 4c studio adapted so well and so beautiful i was blown away plus this contains veteran animator also other in-between animator as well. Watch the English version. its more proper to the story it take place

When it comes to the plot and narrative which i need to re-watch the film. I do believe the pacing is pretty good to an extent which i mean its somewhat fast past a well, also make the story less flesh out in some certain area such as character, agenda and execution meaning climax. causing the story to be somewhat absurd sometimes which i wish i spoil but nope. Characters traits are brilliant they have there quirks and there irony which there ignorant teenager humor and some *spoiler* --political conspiracy--.

The problem when i see altra violent art in anime or films. Its how they portrayed. I more likely ranting but ima make this quick and simple you can't just add voilent and bate the viewer by adding simple or cutie design or personality traits and smash them into piece. They tend to get a huge mass of view when it comes to show like ... re zero but overall in this film its really organic such as action, body gesture movement, caracter and characters, making them feel believable when you bring them to a gritty poverty slum setting.


the soundtrack is great. u get dat french house shit. i think some track are good and some are abit ehh.. But don't worry theres orchestrated tracks as well.

First you get the redline 2009 then you the the devilmane and now you get the mutafukaz. You see where im getting at. I felt like we need to promote more traditional animation being release in huge popular theaters to help domestic sales and gets some fucking oscar awards not no fake ass asian big hero 6 winning over princess kaguya

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This is my first review, so please don't kill me for any mistakes... ;)

Interesting that a quite niche-anime like Mutafukaz gets a two-days cinema screening in Germany thanks to Peppermint. There were just around 20 people in the movie when I was watching it, so financially it may not have been that good for the cinema. Still for me it was worth it.

Story (3/10):
For me, the only bad thing about the movie was the story. Without doing any spoilers, it's just senseless and hilarious, especially in the second half of the movie. It fits to the movie in general, but some things just happen randomly and you think "why the hell is this part of the movie?" or "what's going on here? that doesn't make sense". It's just hangling around from joke to joke without a proper point to reach at first, and everything is happening too fast to think about it some more. Well, the movie doesn't take itself too serious, so it's okay, but I didn't like it. The comical absurdity made me give it 3 points for story, otherwise a 2 or 1 would not have been far away...

Art (7/10):
The source material for the movie is a French comic strip, so don't expect an Asian art style here at all. Everyhing looks like a mixture between European and American culture (it plays in America somehow, so that's fine). It doesn't feel like an anime, more like a normal European animation movie. The animation is well-done and there are so much details in the pictures that you won't be able to get all at your first watch for sure.

Sound (9/10):
A cultural mixture of French hip-hop and house, and Latin music (for example Reggaeton). For me the best song was the Reggaeton song running during the credits. The songs perfectly fit to the background, but are completely different from most anime soundtracks. You may be disappointed if you like the pop/rock/metal-oriented soundtracks of Japanese anime movies.

Character (7/10):
Most characters in this movie didn't really make sense or were just hilariously exaggerated (clichès / stereotypes ahead!), which absolutely makes sense concerning the story. The two main characters are the only ones acting fairly normal. Sadly only one of the two gets a real characterization, while the second one acts more as a sidekick that stumbled into the whole thing by accident. Does he even have motives? We don't know...

In addition to that, it's not explained why some of the protagonists look as they look. This may be some reference, too, but I didn't get it then.

Enjoyment (9/10):
I was just laughing all the time (except for the parts where I was thinking "what the hell is going on here?"). The movie features lots and lots of Western cultural references. The humour of this movie is REALLY black. They don't fear to mock about anything: brand names, conspiracy theories, people, politics and many more. This is why the movie was so enjoyable for me, and I'm sure I didn't find all the hints and references at first watch. Some senseless stuff made me sigh because I didn't find it funny, but the rest was really worth it.

Overall: 6/10
Well, I'm sad that the story was not really fitting for me. The rest was very good and I would have given an 8/10, but this more or less patched story doesn't allow it. I gave a 6/10 because the movie overall is exactly what this number means: "nice".

I recommend tha movie to everybody from a Western audience who wants to laugh about cultural jokes. I fear many Asian viewers or people who like anime may be disappointed when watching it.

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Before considering watching this movie, please note that it is rated R - 17+ and has a lot of violence and profanity. In my opinion, it should be 15+.

Hello reader, my name is Vaughn Hart. My review has no spoilers and doesn't involve deeper meaning/symbolism. This is a pure review of what I think about the movie. Please read the movie synopsis before continuing. I'll refer to the movie name Mutafukaz as MFKZ throughout the review. (Note: I rate anime/movies from 1-5 instead of 1-10, which means 8/10 is the second-best rating I give.)

Story: 10/10
In MFKZ there is only 1 story, that's the main story. It starts off slowly but picks up pace fairly fast. MFKZ starts off not telling you much, which got me interested as soon as the plot was introduced. I can't really say much about the story since it's easy to spoil. Just know that it is very well written! (I know I said I wouldn't go into symbolism, but there is so much that it is unavoidable. I was really excited to find little details that meant more than they seemed. Bonus points for this!)

Art: 10/10
The art is VERY good! It's very easy to understand what's going on at all times. The animation is very smooth. Something I noticed was that the characters were drawn with very thin lines, which I loved, I guess that's a personal preference thing though. The colors fit the story well, dark colors surrounded the movie, which matches the slightly dark & depressing vibe the story gave.

Sound: 10/10
Oh my god, I loved the music! The music really invested me into the movie, it fits well with every scene. The voice-acting was very good, nothing to die for though. Really nothing to say about the sound except that it was nearly perfect.

Character: 8/10
With the limited 1 hour 34 Minutes they had to work with, they did a very good job. Every character had a major role in telling the story. Most characters felt like real people with real emotions. This movie did an amazing job at making no one feel immortal, both the baddies and goodies felt like they were at death's door. The reason this isn't a 10/10

Enjoyment: 10/10
This movie was very involving, it does a great job of keeping mysteries hidden from the viewer. I was constantly trying to figure out what was going to happen next. The movie is very unique/different from any other animated movie I've seen, which made it an easy watch.

Overall: 10/10
This movie is incredibly underrated! As of writing this review, the movie is #3399 in average score and #4356 in popularity. Not only does this mean the movie is incredibly unknown, but it's also underrated (current score is 7.08 with 7,192 votes. 16,000 members.)! Definitely, a must-watch, finding good unique movies nowadays is incredibly hard. This movie is an adaptation of the 1988 movie They Live, which I have not seen.

Thanks a ton for reading this review. The main reason I created this review was because of how incredibly unknown MFKZ is. That's it for the review, cya homies! <3

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