‘Jinsei': Ryuya Suzuki's solo animation is a singular debut
I'm not sure what it says about the current state of Japanese cinema that one of the most striking movies of the year so far was created in isolation — not just from the film industry, but from people in general. Thirty-year-old Ryuya Suzuki wrote, directed, animated, edited and soundtracked his debut feature, 'Jinsei' ('Life'), all by himself. The only reason the end credits go on for as long as they do is because he drew individual portraits of each of the project's several hundred crowdfunding supporters.
The film's publicity hails it as a successor to Kenji Imaisawa's 'On-Gaku: Our Sound' (2020) and Takahide Hori's 'Junk Head' (2021), two recent landmarks in outsider animation. Yet while those solo endeavors each took seven years to make, Suzuki got the job done in a more modest 18 months. This isn't to downplay the effort involved, merely to say that it's easier to imagine other people being inspired to have a go themselves.
We never learn the name of the film's protagonist (voiced by rapper Ace Cool), although he's addressed by many different monikers over the course of the story: Se-chan, Kuro, Zen, God.
By the time he gets properly introduced, we've already seen his parents' lives flash before our eyes, in a wordless prologue that recalls the famous opening sequence of Pete Docter's 'Up.' There's another montage toward the end of the film that's even more audacious, closer in spirit to Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' as it leaves the Earth — and humanity — behind. 'Jinsei' comes at you fast; it has a vertiginous effect that's both thrilling and stomach-churning.
After seeing his mother run down by an elderly driver in an accident that also leaves his deadbeat father in a coma, our hero finds himself in the custody of hapless stepdad Hiroshi (Shohei Uno). At school, the other kids nickname him 'Shinigami' — God of Death — but he manages to strike up a friendship with a bleach-blond transfer student named Kin (Taketo Tanaka).
The latter dreams of becoming a pop idol, and on learning that his pal's birth father was once a member of a hit boy band, he resolves that they make a bid for stardom together. However, fame comes at a price — in this case, a Faustian bargain with a predatory pop mogul clearly modeled on the late Johnny Kitagawa.
There's already enough material here for a feature film, but 'Jinsei' is only just getting started. The story still has many decades to cover, as its protagonist — a taciturn, emotional blank slate — rockets between success and catastrophe, both personal and global. Perhaps having a more relatable character at the heart of the tale would have made it more resonant, but it's still a hell of a ride.
Suzuki's flat, minimalist visuals and mordant humor bring to mind Liu Jian's 'Have a Nice Day,' another bare-bones production. Animation allows him to do things that would be far harder for a live-action film, while working solo lets him take bigger risks — and not just in his willingness to grapple with Kitagawa's toxic legacy.
Sure, he overextends himself at times. When the story leaves all familiar reference points behind and hurtles into the future, it sacrifices some of the texture and richness of the earlier chapters. But this one-man indie wonder is a work of true vision.
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