Just saw this movie Mind Game, downloaded off Bittorrent. It is completely amazing. Japanese animation, but good. And not good like Miyazaki is good.

Like... I liked The Triplets Of Belleville way more than I like anime. And that might be a better reference point. I don't know, I think it's beyond any kind of nation or nerdiness, and it just kicks out the animation jams something fierce.

The style is forever changing, although the story's mostly linear. And the story, the writing, it's great. It amounts to something special. There's a bit of the weird Japanese attitudes towards sex, and a perverted old man, but that's really the extent of it. Not nerdy in the least. FLCL's got some genre imagery with the robots and whatever, and Dead Leaves has this annoying fucking voice and is really just this vehicle for violence- It's awesome but this is better. And the style is never big eyes. Well, on occasion. That's not the main style, it's just sometimes engaged in for the sake of expressionism. It's really something special and great and HIGHLY recommended. It just started screening in New York apparently, although it was completed in 2004. It is awesome and pushes things forward on like fifteen different levels all while being this populist piece of entertainment.

Not just for anime nerds or kids who want to be japanese.

I asked for high fives DURING the movie, and double high fives afterwards.

It's really great. The first fifteen minutes or so only hint at the greatness to come. And they only barely hint.

I don't want to say I liked it better than Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind or 3-Iron or even The Triplets Of Belleville, as it's very much it's own thing, but I will say that I loved it wholeheartedly and it's... It's better than other films I liked it more, in that it's more experimental and forward-thinking, although it's still totally a populist piece of entertainment. I was moved close to tears of joy at the end. And throughout the middle, I was... My mouth moved in ways I didn't try to control. I spittled and I laughed in astonishment and I was completely entertained.

I loved it. Alex Tripp loved it. Loren Thor loved it. Evan Hashi loved it. These are all the people I watched it with. You will probably love it. You should definitely see it, on a big screen if possible, especially if you're into things like "movies" and "creativity," alone or together.