Too Young to Die!

“Motherf**ker!” is the war cry of writer-director Kankuro Kudo’s new extravaganza, a heavy-metal comedy that features hairstyles that could easily be mistaken for exploding crows and enough all-around bad-assery to send the whole current J-Rock scene back to study in Thatcher-era Birmingham. But beneath the feast of rock music and hilariously absurd reimaginations of Buddhist imagery, Kankuro Kudo’s film is a simple and sometimes deeply affecting tale of love and life choices. The story follows a high-school student, Daisuke (Ryunosuke Kamiki), literally down to hell. As it happens, the bus that the boy was on crashed, dragging the entire class to death. Daisuke is rudely awakened by the guitar-shredding demon Killer K (Tomoya Nagase) and his headbanging devil bandmates in a psychedelic version of Buddhist hell. Determined to reunite with his sweetheart Hiromi (Aoi Morikawa), who might still be alive, Daisuke makes a pact with Killer K to escape Inferno. But heaven and earth, it seems, are a few reincarnations away.