THE STORY – A man’s journey through life, marked by various names and labels, leads him to unexpected success while confronting modern social issues and personal struggles along the way.
THE CAST – ACE COOL, Shohei Uno, Remi Tyon, Eri Kamataki & Taketo Tanaka
THE TEAM – Ryuya Suzuki (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
For Japanese animator Ryuya Suzuki, nothing is not ambitious for his directorial debut feature film. Titling his film “Jinsei” (“Life”) is a big swing in itself, but choosing to chronicle a man’s life over the course of a century, through times of war, death, and social upheaval, is no easy task. Even more impressive is that “Jinsei” was completely written, directed, edited, scored, and entirely hand-drawn over 18 months by Suzuki himself, for a project financed largely through crowdfunding. Given these circumstances, the fact that the film exists at all is impressive. The fact that it has revealed a singular new voice in anime makes “Jinsei” even more notable.
Suzuki has set his tale in the century between 1994 and 2095, following a young boy (voiced throughout the film by rap star ACE COOL) who is never called by his real name throughout his life. Instead, he is known only by his nicknames, which serve as the titles of the film’s 10 chapters. Known first as Se-Chan, he suffers a miserable childhood, enduring intense bullying in school and living through a shocking tragedy when an elderly driver kills his mother and puts his father into an irreversible coma. His custody is given over to hapless stepdad (Shohei Uno), who tries his best but can’t give the boy the support that he needs.
It isn’t until Kin (Taneto Tanaka), a transfer student, arrives at school that our hero, using the family name Aoki, breaks out of his social isolation. Kin wants to be a pop idol like Aoki’s biological father, and he encourages Aoki to audition for a top record mogul. Both boys make it into ZENROKU, a boy band sextet that the mogul is forming, and our hero, now renamed Kuro, becomes the kind of pop idol that his father once was. But seeing how Kin has fallen prey to the toxic exploitation of the entertainment industry, Kuro decides he wants no part of it and quits the band, an honorable path but one that leads him to a life of destitution.
Suzuki’s hand-drawn visuals throughout these chapters are a far cry from the wide-eyed figures and bold colors typically associated with anime. Because he draws all the images himself, he can skillfully match the film’s style to the content of the chapters he’s illustrating. In the early years of our hero’s social isolation, the film’s palette is desaturated, with blacks, whites, and grays reflecting his mood. As he enters his years of J-pop stardom, the visuals grow brighter, with neon colors that symbolize the glamour of fame, all of which fade into shadows when our hero’s fortunes go south.
It’s in the film’s final chapters that the visuals gain deeper meaning as our hero rises from his desperate straits to become a hero during a national disaster, then a “Mountain God” capable of enormous power, a much-beloved movie star, a survivor in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and finally an oracle dispensing wisdom to all who seek it. These chapters depict a world far less visually defined than the film’s earlier sections, suggesting sci-fi-like landscapes of a ravaged world, with dark reds and dim purples that suggest a civilization gone to seed as our hero concludes his time on earth.
As thematically resonant as its visuals might be, the film lacks the same impact from its narrative. Using 10 different chapters to tell a story makes it play more like an anthology than a classic narrative, and, as such, some segments simply work better than others. The scenes involving Se-Chan being bullied at school and traumatized by his mother’s death are compelling, and the film ends strongly with a striking depiction of the final moments of life. But the extended boy-band sequences slow the narrative’s momentum, making its case that the industry is exploitative once too often.
Similarly, situating our protagonist as an opaque character — into whom devotees can see whatever they desire — may serve a strong dramatic purpose on paper, but having a leading character who’s so hard to read makes it difficult for viewers to empathize with him, no matter how hard he is struggling in life. It’s a trade-off that yields mixed results for the audience.
Despite the film’s often uneven narrative, the sheer breadth of what Suzuki has undertaken is cause for admiration. This is independent animation in its truest form -one artist in total control of his work, bypassing the financial pressures of corporate sponsors in favor of funding his art with the support of everyday citizens (As a way of saying “Thank you,” Suzuki has drawn a small portrait of each of his crowdsourcing donors in the film’s final credits). For all the narrative hiccups it sometimes suffers, the film’s bold vision and unique aesthetic herald a fresh new voice on the anime scene, and I greatly anticipate its next work.
