Dirs. Masahiro Maeda, Koji Morimoto, Kazuto Nakazawa, Shinya Ohara, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, 2008, Japan.
We saw the first installment of this GENIUS PARTY anthology at Sitges last year and I’m detecting familiar parts of the process as I do my homework for this second installment.
As we’re not aficionados of Anime here at CS we have to place our trust in those who are……and there’s the rub. As fans they see this work through different eyes and therefore inject their reviews, knowingly or otherwise, with an enthusiasm that’s perhaps lost on a wider audience. No problem there. This work is not to everyone’s taste but its merits lie in many layers and, as a member of the wider audience, I believe my taste (appreciation) only extends to perhaps one or two of those layers.
I’m blown away by some aspects of the visuals yet find myself bemused as to why other visually poor work sits along side in this anthology format. I understand the concept of gathering the current or up and coming animation talent together to display their work in one place, but when it varies so greatly both in content and quality, I feel that it doesn’t work as a feature length presentation
So back to my homework. The reviews for GENIUS PARTY BEYOND sound promising, as they did for GENIUS PARTY last year, but I find myself asking the question…..Am I prepared to sit through 3 or 4 bad pieces to get to the one genius piece? A similar question could be asked of Sitges generally, however, while I’ve found that aspect of the festival to be its most appealing, with GENIUS PARTY I felt nothing but disappointment.
Then I go and watch the trailer (see below) and the one aspect I instinctively appreciate, the visuals, gets knocked out of the park. I’m not interested in either section 1 or 3, but then section 2 (Moondrive), section 4 (Toujin Kit) and, section 5 (Dimension bomb) look amazing. Bugger! Now what the hell am I going to do?
For the record, I enjoyed going back over this piece on GENIUS PARTY to see if I could learn to love the aspects I disliked. Unfortunately, I can’t say my opinion has changed.
IMDB entry for Genius party beyond
Studio 4ºC official site (cool)
Wise words:
Twitch films on Genius party beyond
corridorstylefilms.com 