Kiseichuu no Ichiya

The Midnight Parasites is probably the best Yoji Kuri short I've ever seen. His style is typical kind of crude, the equipment and resources available to him were limited, and he didn't have a staff to dictate. His style works best when he's trying to create a unique world with its own special atmosphere. This one resembles some kind of hell or nightmare and it draws heavily from medieval imagery of demons and painters like Hieronymus Bosch—even directly lifting a few figures from Garden of Earthly Delights. It's one of the more surreal shorts I've seen as of late.

Adding to the roughness, the animated figures ... are all in color, while they inhabit a monochromatic world—a world that is not only very sparse, but arranged with pleasing composition and texture as the creatures roam the landscape. There is seemingly no sense of direction to this world and the actors all seem bestial and lacking any real sentience, though there does seem to be some kind of logic in operation here—a kind of inverted, hellish ecology; nature has taken its course, but it's far removed from what we know.

There's no story or dialogue to speak of. We're permitted to explore the world through the eyes and whims of the various critters, and if you really paid close attention, you might notice some patterns, but this primarily appears to be a depiction of a disturbing dream. The electronic score is also very, very good and complements the film perfectly.

Kuri Yoji has caught my attention before. I have heard of a few of his titles. But didn't bother to watch any until recently. He is considered, "one of, if not the most important figures in the history of Japanese independent animation", which, I will admit, doesn't really strike as true when you first look into his works. To be fair, you need to understand that this is quite odd stuff, so the time in which you watch his works matters, that isn't to say it becomes impossible to enjoy them for what they should have been, you just need to know what they are ... about.

One of his titles I found off of YouTube comments, it is named "寄生虫の一夜" (The Midnight Parasites), which I heard good things about is something I decided to take a look into. Let's have a look at what I got from it, and what you can get too.

The story is odd, strange, weird. It doesn't make sense, or at least, it doesn't on the surface, but I found it to basically just be a theme, no real story, but just entities doing stuff. That stuff seemed to come under what would probably make sense to call the cycle of life. With these parasites, these unearthly creatures, basically just feeding off of things, then doing some nonsense, then dying off, creating something new to enjoy this odd world. It is casually dark, and casually disgusting, not really taking in any care as to what it is presenting, making for some pretty good natural scenes that went wherever it wanted to go. Some more deep thought is that this world seemingly has had this order for a long time, with there being leftovers visible as you look on the scenery, I find it hard to believe this may be a coincidence so it comes to question, and praise, of what is this world really. A surreal, though normal way for these people to live? Who knows?

As for audiovisuals, the art is obviously old, I liked the animation though and the character design was cartoon-ish. For its time, it isn't really static or retro either, it does indeed feel like something ahead of its time, which I find a good achievement. The soundtrack was surreal, it has this way of playing that would make you feel as if you were watching a conspiracy theory about aliens or something along those lines, which of course is very fitting for something like this. Very good stuff.

I enjoyed this, mostly because it was senseless, but hey I made something out of it, I may be wrong. I would imagine most people would probably not enjoy this, as maybe the themes may go over their heads because of how silly this can get, though, maybe you can find something out of it. Would recommend for those looking for something very random and extremely unique, outside of mainstream random unique. Or if you want "so dumb it's clever".

Overall - 7.8 (8)
(Click "Overall Rating" for score breakdown)

I gave it a 1

time was not 10 minutes but more 9 minutes and 30 seconds
This is not anime but art
no vocals
the music is that of a dream sequence much like the art

The art even though i hated this had some pros and cons. If you want good test if you can handle strange events trying watching this. Warning it can make you ill.

Some cons. The animation was repetitive. The artist(s) kept using transformation in their work. There was no story line. Sure there was some follow threw with some of the sketches but mostly you are jumping back and forth between things.
...
some pros: there was color used when it could have been used with just black and white. It showed promise of the artist(s) being good in the future of horror. The music used matched the arts design.

The message behind this piece i think was no matter what life creates for you there is no escaping destiny. Which is quite a depressing message. I hope i am wrong on that. Then again the artwork wasn't a and they live happy ever after story.