Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I think 'Mind Game' is one of those movies that you either really like or really hate, but never in the middle. I spent first 20 minutes itching to turn it off since the animation style didn't seem all that pleasant, but then things just kept happening and before I knew it I was really immersed in it.'Mind Game' has everything: irony, action, humour , even romance; and it touches practically every aspect of human life, going from relationships to domestic problems. All that covered in psychedelic imagery leaves a great impression.You might experience various emotions watching this movie but one thing for sure, you won't feel like you've wasted your time when it's over.

"This is one surreal mess!" says one character in the film and, yessir, how right she is as weird doesn't even begin to describe the highly experimental anime "Mind Game," Maasaki Yuasa's adaptation of Robin Nishi's manga. It's simultaneously an assault to the senses (Oh, what bright colors! Oh what loud drum rolls!) and an assault to logic (What the hell did they just do?) though it's not to say it's not a hilariously entertaining trip.The film's narrative -- if you can even call it that -- involves the struggling comic artist Nishi (voiced by Koji Imada) who has just met his childhood girlfriend Myon (Sayaka Maeda) and they catch things up in her father's yakitori pub where they come face to face with two Yakuza members. Nishi gets killed in the process but in a highly bizarre encounter with God in the afterlife, he is brought to life, manages to kill both gangsters, and makes a run for it with Myon and her sister Yan (Seiko Takuma) as they are pursued by other gang members. The three are then swallowed whole by a giant whale. Trapped inside with a man who has spent the last 30 years inside the whale's belly, Nishi, Myon and Yan finally get a chance what true happiness means for them.A Dali painting by way of a French New Wave film, the wildly unpredictable head trip of the aptly titled "Mind Game" beguiles all logical conventions, presented in dumbfounding temporal edits, inebriating close-up transitions, and varying degrees of crude yet proficient artworks. Unsuspecting viewers are likely to be thrown off by Yuasa's helter-skelter bombast (an outlook substantiated by not a few walkouts from the film's screening) but with exactly the right frame of mind, notwithstanding a sometimes bloated feeling courtesy of the film clocking at a little over 100 minutes, this heckuva kaleidoscopic joyride should delight as it tramples all cinematic formalities and shows, should you decide to break the rules, how to do it with style.

This movie is really what the title says it is. At first I thought the title was bad, since it didn't say anything about the film, but in the end I realized it does.If you are looking for a normal story (you know, with a start, an end, a punchline) you are not going to find it in this anime. The animation is coarse, not like the classic Japanese animation, a bit like Tokyo Godfathers, but even more symbolic. So why is this film so great?Because of the feeling. Plot and animation separately don't make this great, but together they do. The moral of it all is that you must live your life to the fullest and enjoy everything life throws at you, since it is all you have. No one else is going to live your life or enjoy what you have.My thoughts are that this story is deeply personal to Robin Nishi and, even if a lot of the symbols in it can be singled out and understood, most of it you are left to guess. An argument for this is the torrent of animation sequences that don't make sense in the beginning of the movie, repeated at the end of the movie and suddenly making sense. I believe that is the greatest innovation of this anime.Bottom line: this is an art film. This time I mean it in a good sense :). Perhaps because it has a positive view on live and it is more accessible. Anyway, if you are ready for its message and are in the mood for a fun carpe diem story, you gotta see this. If you've enjoyed Tokyo Godfathers, then you will also like this movie.

Wow. What can I say? I was truly blown away by this movie. Winner of the Noburo Ofuji award (the most prestigious award in Japan for an animated film), this film has unfortunately only had a very limited release in Japan (although it is playing in theaters again since winning the award). The director, Masaaki Yuasa, has previously done critically acclaimed animation work on other series, and helped create the equally mind-blowing, and somewhat disturbing short animated movie "Cat Soup".The first thing about the movie to note is the animation. The animators worked in a collaborative effort, and included a wide range of experimental and traditional animation techniques, a bit of CGI, and even a bit of live action. Viewed as individual pieces, it can be jarring, but seen together as a whole, each piece seems to fit with each other perfectly, with the different animation forms setting the mood perfectly.The story begins in present-day Tokyo, and follows a loser who is letting his childhood girlfriend slip away. Things take a twist to the fantastical side, as the characters embark on a surreal journey that changes everything about them. The actual elements of the plot are not really the focus of the movie..it is about setting the mood, creating the atmosphere of the characters' emotions, and drawing the viewer in to same mental journey the characters are going on, without even realizing it. The pace of the movie picks up and slows in parts, before building up to its thunderous and (literally) exhausting climax.See this movie , if only for the virtuoso animation that you will not see in any other film. And who knows? it just might change your whole outlook on life.