20 were impressed!
30 found no interest in the plot
30 couldn’t tell that there was a plot
10 thought the pacing was awful
10 didn’t really care for the quality of the animation
Mutafukaz is a Japanese-French collaboration project between Studio 4°C and Ankama. The former being responsible for projects such as the Berserk movie adaptations, a Batman miniseries, and a film adaptation of one of my favorite manga Kaijuu no Kodomo and the latter having made popular French cartoon series Wakfu. I had high hopes having enjoyed Wakfu a great deal, but those expectations fell woefully short. The production quality and pipeline of Studio 4°C seems to be something I just can’t acclimate too, but most importantly Mutafukaz is just not a cohesive film.
There’s some charm to be found in this movie. Interesting character designs and expressive artistic choices, but a decent art direction doesn’t get you anywhere if there’s no substance to back it up. That may be how I best describe this film. Formless. The movie is paced so absolutely terribly every scene change comes out of nowhere with no real explanation. As the viewer you should be guided from point A to point B when watching a film and it is up to the timing director to make that transition a smooth line. As far as I could tell Mutafukaz plot was a number of dots on a board with no lines connecting them.
I’ve done this film a bit of a disservice having watched it almost a month ago before reviewing it. Unfortunately, it’s just not memorable enough to recall much to complain about other than the overwhelming sense of wasted time felt after having watched it. Even in shows I more or less hated like Cannon Busters there were some elements I could cling to and complement. I can’t really do that here. The sound track was pretty good, I guess.
