The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Animal World (2018), directed by Han Yan

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Mirai wa Bokura no Te no Naka", by Kaiji and the Redbound Cherries

       To be honest, I don’t take in much anime these days. It used to be, when I was a much younger nerd, that my days seemed to revolve around what came out of Japan. Games, Comics, their seemingly endless amount of naked lady pictures, and of course their most devious of all creations, anime. Yessir, the bulk of my formative years were shaped in part by that uniquely Japanese style of animation; the adventures of Son Goku and Yusuke Urameshi were far more visceral to me than Batman’s struggles with the Joker, and while I couldn’t tell you the rules of American football I could describe the system of equivalent exchange or discuss the symbolism of FLCL. Keep in mind that these were the days when anime was still largely niche, instead of mostly niche like it is now. If you wanted to see a show you had to either fervently hope it got dubbed and sent to the states, which if you’ve seen what happened to One Piece you know was a gamble, or you had to hope a traveling band of translators decided to make it a project and put it up on the internet, which posed its own set of problems. If you wanted to talk about anime, you either were lucky and your friends were into it as well or you were stuck with the kid who used Japanese honorifics in public conversation despite being whiter than the driven snow. And if you wanted to try the internet, well, it was still in the internet in those days, so you were better off hanging out with the guy in the Naruto headband.

As I said however, at a certain point I seemed to largely drift away from the thing that had once commanded my time. Part of it was just the process of growing up I suppose, budgeting time, moving on to other things, part of it was a lack of interest in the material coming, but however it is to be framed the fact was that at a certain point anime had become an afterthought. I watched maybe a few episodes of something and then would abandon it for months at a time, and the things I did keep up with were mostly for reasons of nostalgia. I just couldn’t find it in me to care anymore, of course that could describe me on any given day.

Then, from out of the blue, I discovered a show by the name of Kaiji. Based on the long-running manga series by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Kaiji is nominally a story about gambling and literally an exploration of the human psyche on a epic scale. In true anime fashion there are no average stakes in Kaiji; when you win you are floating up in heaven and when you lose you are pulled into the depths of hell, devoting minutes upon minutes of time giving in-depth explanation of strategy and tactics, and just when you think things can’t get any more insane somehow the bar is raised. I can’t think of many shows anime or otherwise that has managed to get me so completely invested in what was going on, and right from the outset as well. To know Kaiji is to know despair as it turns out, which is what I love about it, and when I found out that there was apparently a live action adaptation of the Kaiji manga released this year made in China, I just had to check it out for myself. Sorry Battle Royale, maybe next year.

       Zheng Kai-si is a man at the end of his rope. Most of his time is spent loafing around playing games and daydreaming (or rather hallucinating) at his job as a clown mascot at an arcade, and most of his money is spent on his mother, who has been in a coma for years now. He can’t afford to keep his mother out of the hallway, he can’t afford to give his girlfriend Liu Qing the life he thinks she deserves, he can barely afford to live. In a fit of desperation he decides to mortgage his family’s apartment to his buddy Li Jun’s real estate company, only to find out that Li Jun hasn’t worked at that company in months. The truth is that Li has a bit of a gambling problem and that when the organization that lent him money came a callin’ he decided to scam Kai-si and saddle him with the debt (plus interest), which has ballooned so greatly that working 4 jobs for 30 years straight would just about pay it, as long as he didn’t have to pay for any hospital bills. However, when Kai-si meets the head of this shady organization, Anderson (played by Michael Douglas), he is offered a magnificent deal: There is a cruise ship by the name of Destiny that’s set to leave harbor soon, where a game is going to be held. If Kai-si join the game and win, he could win enough money to pay off his debt and more besides all in one night. If he loses, well… best not to think about it. Besides, as long as Kai-si wins, it doesn’t really matter what happens when you lose, does it? How bad could it be?

       Animal World is based on the opening arc of part 1 of the Kaiji series, known also as Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji, which would become the first 9 episodes of the anime series. To its credit it actually manages to hit the bullet points of the source material rather consistently, as well as more Fukumoto related bits like the cutaways to show the breakdown of strategies. It gives you a pretty good sense of what people liked about the original material, which isn’t always common when it comes to adaptations, and shows that Han Yan knows which side to butter his bread, so to speak.

       Of course this being an adaptation there are indeed changes from the source material, and in the case of Animal World those changes are numerous. Liu Qing is an invention of the film for example, as is the coma-ridden mom, Kaiji/Kai-si’s arcade job, or really anything concrete about his backstory. Michael Douglas’ character Anderson seems to be a combination of the characters Andou and Tonegawa from the original, while the character named Andou here seems to be relegated to a creepy looking side character. The shady organization also seems to reach a far larger scope than the Japan-centric Teiai Group of the manga, apparently managing to get its hooks into people from across the world. Even things that you wouldn’t think warranted changing ended up getting changed, like the name of the ship they end up on, Espoir in the original and Destiny in the film (and no, Espoir is not French for Destiny).

       Then there are the fantasy sequences, which are explained in the film as PTSD-inspired hallucinations. Fantastical imagery is actually in line with the original Kaiji, as FKMT uses it often to visualize character’s mental states. A character in the depths of despair might be shown being dragged down into a swamp for instance, or somebody on the upswing might be climbing the broad side of a mountain. To our director Han Yan, this has convinced him that he has carte blanche to just throw in whatever he wants whenever he wants. So you have the kind of classic Kaiji moments, and then you have characters literally becoming monsters every few minutes. I can understand the argument for throwing Liu Qing or coma mom into the story as adding an emotional core to the film (although the original story did fine without them), but who is the minutes long dream sequence with Kai-si fighting monsters on a train while dressed as a clown with more slow motion than a Zack Snyder wet dream for, exactly? Because as a Kaiji fan, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for me or people like me.

       Which brings us to the major problem with Animal World in my opinion, which is pointless excess. Nothing is allowed to just be normal in this film it seems, it all has to be grim-dark and badass, in the 14-year old boy sense of the term. So Andou isn’t allowed to just be a man in a black suit and sunglasses, he has to be this tattooed weirdo with no eyebrows. The Destiny can’t just be a cruise ship, it has to look like it was built from the remnants of an oil rig. Oh, and it wouldn’t be Kaiji is we didn’t inject a meaningless 15 minute long chase scene right in the middle like this were the fucking Life of Brian. Even the damn cards used in the games aren’t allowed to just be cards, they’ve got to be covered in gold leaf and overly elaborate design like you pulled it out of Harry Potter’s asshole. What’s the point? The way that Kaiji was done was fine as it was, proven by the fact that it’s a renowned series that has several adaptations. It pushed the boundaries of believability, but FKMT always kept things down-to-earth enough that the problems and the drama were on point. Here in Animal World, where you can’t even show the concept of time with an image of a watch packed with grinding gears, where it feels like someone slapped a Guillermo del Toro filter on a screenshot from 300, everything feels so ludicrously over-the-top that it just feels tiresome to watch at a certain point. Just smoke a joint or something and calm the fuck down Han Yan, turning a comic book about gambling into some kind of Michael Bay bullshit isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems. I’ve already got enough problems as it is anyway.
   
I’m also not overly impressed with the quality of the acting here. Generally speaking it’s fine, but at points I wonder if Han Yan decided to make Kai-si ‘crazy’ because Li Yifeng only has about three expressions. In a series that is mired in drama, in scenes where we are supposed to be seeing the heights of emotion, Li doesn’t seem able to hit the high notes, so to speak. The actress who plays Liu Qing might be even worse, having only one expression compared to Kai-si’s handful, but since her importance to the plot is minimal I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. I don’t know if Michael Douglas is bringing much to the table either besides star power, but then again I believe this is first time I’ve ever actually seen him in a movie, so I can’t really judge his performance off of his previous work. He may have played a better vaguely menacing villain in another film, I don’t know.

I will admit though, that for a film that smothers the audience in CGI and slo-mo, it doesn’t look too bad. The monsters and special effects look nice and the action sequences, while superfluous, are choreographed and edited well, and are easy enough to follow. I’ll also note that during the moments when it’s not trying so hard I actually grew a bit fond of Animal World’s aesthetic. It reminds one of that period in the swingin’ 90s where movies were grimy as all hell and it looked like everything was dripping with tetanus, like 12 Monkeys or The Basketball Diaries. I can appreciate a director who appreciates my personal aesthetic.

I find myself then at a crossroads. There is a lot of dumb stuff in this movie, and if it ever got a sequel (which the ending does set up for), it seems like it would be going down an even dumber direction. On the other hand I am a huge Kaiji fan, and while the movie does become tiresome at points I don’t think I ever became straight-up bored. So do I discard it for the mess it made, or do I commend it for its creativity? Do I denounce it as a shoddy imitation of something I love, or praise for its unorthodox approach at adaptation? It’s a question I’ll answer immediately in the next paragraph, but believe me that it took a couple days to consider. I’m that dedicated to the job.

In the end, I think I’m giving Animal World the recommendation. Thinking over things, the fact that it managed to entertain me rather consistently across two hours (some movies can’t do it in half that) is ultimately what pushed me to the ‘stupid but fun’ side, in spite of the director’s hyperactive approach to storytelling. You should check out the source material as well obviously, as the manga and to a lesser extent the anime are the definitive versions, but pop this in (or click on it, because I believe it’s netflix exclusive) and you’ll probably have a fun Halloween night. Insert witty closing line about taking a gamble on this movie here.