Mind Game

Based on the Robin Nishi manga, Masaaki Yuasa’s postmodern cult animation Mind Game, his debut feature, is a genre-melding ego-cum-acid-trip to the beyond (and back) that channels everything from Buddhism and the Bible to Hayao Miyazaki, Tex Avery, and Salvador Dalí. The head-spinning barrage of surreal images in its opening sequence should tell all you need to know about Yuasa’s singular style, which mixes live-action and animation with a far-from-linear story about a wimpy protagonist named Nishi. After Nishi is shot in the butt by a deranged Yakuza gangster, his consciousness is projected into the afterlife, where he’s confronted with a shape-shifting god and a phantasmagoric journey expressed by Yuasa’s singular imagination—a film instantly hailed by the likes of Satoshi Kon and Bill Plympton.