So this movie was recommended to me by a friend of mine that I worked with in Japan, he actually still lives there. We have a lot in common and similar tastes in a lot of things, so I expected to like this movie, despite the odd title.
Mutafukaz is an animated movie, which I normally don’t like, that is really well done. The film was a collaboration between French and Japanese studios, which I found pretty interesting. The first thing I noticed was the unique and interesting animation style, it’s like a mix between western and eastern animation. It flows smoothly and and the intricate and highly detailed backgrounds and cityscapes are gorgeous. The music choices for certain scenes fit so well, it really makes you appreciate the effort that went into it. Another thing that stood out to me almost immediately was the voice acting. Usually when I watch something animated, it feels like the characters are being voiced by a person, but in this movie it feels like the voices belong to the characters. Speaking of the characters, there are some interesting design choices here, some better than others. While most of the world is made up of humans, the plot revolves around anthropomorphic characters.
The story is average, there’s a young adult named Angelino living in a bad part of a big city barely making enough to survive. He looks like a taller version of Mr. Hankey from South Park and his best friend and roommate is a skeleton whose head is eternally on fire. One day, Angelino notices he’s being followed by some men in black suits and something switches in him that allows him to move like a superhero pretty much. We get some really good fight, shootout, and car chase scenes along the way through different hoods and a spaceship as Angelino finds out he’s not of this world. The ending was probably satisfactory to most since it’s a mostly happy ending, but I didn’t like it. We didn’t get to see the main character realize his full potential and while he fought two of the main bad guys, he wasn’t the one that defeated them. Also, the evil mastermind behind everything faced no consequences.
Some things that I found worth mentioning are some really good character designs, specifically the cops that raid Angelino’s apartment at the beginning. They’re these huge armored giants wearing blank faced masks that are armed to the teeth, very intimidating. One of the main villains, Bruce, is also really well designed and written. There is a lot of violence and gore in this movie as well and it’s drawn beautifully. The visuals of this movie are what carried it to me and when you add the music, voice acting, and world building, it overshadows the sub-par plot and disappointing ending.
I give it an 8/10. (Word count: 476)
Baphomet's Theatre 