Asura

I didn't expect to like the anime movie as much as the manga for the simple reason that so much was changed or omitted... and normally, I'm usually a stickler for not changing things and letting things stick with the themes and tone they were meant to represent. For context, I recently read through the entirety of what I could find for Asura, which is what was covered in the movie, just not the apparent epilogue that came later. So as well as a movie, I'm reviewing this as an adaptation.

That being said, everything felt like it really popped to life in this movie... We ... are missing entire plotlines from the manga like Asura finding out about the lives of his parents and learning forgiveness, his relationship with the local group of boys, and Wakasa's love triangle, but at the same time I know this movie was still enough to get me really emotional and keep what was needed, and I can't knock it for that. In my head, I still see the dopey-er design for Asura from the manga, but the animation and acting felt pretty flawless while watching.

The one later scene that is criticized for having been changed the most, Wakasa's decision on whether or not to save herself from starvation with what she believes to be human meat, while arguably changed for a more hopeful outlook on humanity, still got me tearing up because of Asura's pure desperation to see Wakasa live. It's not an exact adaptation and there are arguments to be made for things that should have been kept, but I would still buy this movie to add to my personal collection, as well as the manga, if given the chance.

Asura best unga bunga boi.

Asura is not the typical kind of anime in that it's more grotesque in delivering a philosophical idea: what does it mean to be human? Are we a product of our environment? These types of themes can be seen in other anime, but this film uses the subject of cannibalism to drive this thought process, which is something I haven't seen done in anime before. During the entire movie, Asura has to face three powerful influences on his character: a monk, who stirs up Asura's fight against his beastly nature; Wakasa, who shows him love that he hadn't known since his mother ... abandoned him, and a lord, who villainizes Asura and confuses his chances on becoming accepted as a human being. All three play a very large role with Asura, but you won't connect with any of these characters. I feel as though you're not supposed to. You're an outsider looking in. Your job is to analyze the situation, and hopefully arrive to a meaningful conclusion. Plus, there's so many conflicts that are thrown at the viewer, I don't see how anyone could consider liking any of the characters. One in particular, the monk, is very interesting, but he only comes in when needed to push the story forward.

This story makes a big deal out of encouraging the viewer to think on whether Asura might just be a young boy trying to survive. Maybe he already is human? Maybe people are inherently good and want to be that way, if their environment will let them? But for me, the film was more of the shortcomings of human nature. Manipulation, lying, hatred, double standards and selfishness. There are plenty of instances where I questioned, why would Wakasa, someone who is literally teaching Asura to love, show the opposite? Or why would the lord be selfish to his own starving people, but instead of the people villainizing the lord, they turn on Asura? There was a lot of foolishness based on human behavior. Seeing Asura's mother abandon him due to starvation twisting her mind, showed me how the environment can sway a person to do things they wouldn't think was morally acceptable, as opposed to how some of the characters purposefully treated Asura and each other. When the credits rolled, I was mostly left feeling frustrated with human decisions.

In terms of the quality of the artwork and sound, it was overall good. I was pretty surprised by the CGI. Usually in anime, it's clunky or ill-fitting, almost as if it's pointless. This CGI seemed more of a mix of 3D and 2D, so there was a bit more fluidity to character movement that made this enjoyable to watch. Great care was put into Asura's facial expressions. There's a scene where Asura has to fight or die, and his facial expressions really helped me to sympathize with him at that time. The sound effects fit the theme, they were odd and jarring. I think they wanted the sounds to be alarming since the nature of the film includes cannibalism. And let's be honest, Asura looks creepy af! Masako Nozawa's voice acting for the character Asura was amazing. She was definitely the most notable out of the cast. Everyone did a good job, but I enjoyed Masako Nozawa the most. Lastly, the background music was very suspenseful. Even though this is supposed to be a philosophical movie, it's still lightweight horror/thriller. So the repetitive bass during one of the fight scenes made me pretty tense.

This is definitely not a film I could recommend to everyone. If you like the macabre with some pretty dark philosophical undertones, then this would be for you. It's not a spectacular anime, especially since it immediately throws the nature vs nurture argument at the viewer. Also, in my opinion, the film tried too hard to encourage the viewer to think about that argument and in doing so, dropped the ball a few times with character influences. Luckily the CGI was pretty interesting and the story moved quickly.

Asura kicks off with a pregnant woman giving a quite graphic birth to a boy, before she beats a wild dog to death with a nearby axe. As we can see, things are looking pretty grim in this world. Everyone is dying and the only way to survive sometimes is to resort to cannibalism. This baby eventually leaves his mother (after she throws him onto a fire with the intent of eating him) and becomes a wild child who runs across the countryside, eating other dying people.

To be fair to the producers of Asura, there probably was a time in history when the outlook for ... society really was this grim. There probably was a time when a child would stumble while pushing a log and a guard would order his father to throw his feeble son into the ravine. There indeed probably was a time when haggard housewives would stumble along a road, gossiping about how their next door neighbour ate her baby. Maybe it’s just my fault that I can’t take such a bleak world at face value. But it would really help if the show didn’t keep undermining itself.

For one, there’s no context given for how the world ended up in this state. People are poor and there’s no food, that’s just how life is. It never gives any idea that an alternative would ever exist. It’s just grim decay from start to finish, and it really likes to beat us over the head with this, to the point that it flips around and becomes unintentional comedy. The spurts of blood that would shoot out of someone the cannibal kid attacked looked completely ridiculous. It also has real issues with continuity sometimes. The cannibal kid suddenly jumped from having a vocabulary of about 10 words to being able to philosophise the pain of existence.

Then there was the CG, which had the usual problems CG has. Characters do that thing where they sway in motion for a few seconds before coming to a standstill, like a video game character returning to their neutral stance. Hair seems to be made out of flat pieces of paper glued onto the top of their head like a wig. I know the movie is supposed to look ugly, but I don’t think these were the kinds of ugly it was going for. Sometimes I wonder whether my dislike of fully CG anime comes from me being used to 2D animation and having a gut dislike of anime designs in 3D, but then I see a shot where someone’s standing still but their feet are mysteriously hovering a few centimetres above the ground and dismiss that thought.

It’s has some incredibly dumb scenes too. I’m going to spoil a big plot twist here, but you shouldn’t watch the movie anyway so who cares. The kid occasionally meets this monk who tries to teach him not to become a killer. During one of his attempts to teach the kid, the monk pulls out a sword and then swings at his own arm. I thought this about making the kid realise he cared for someone and would stop the monk from swinging the sword. But I was under the mistaken assumption that the movie was leading to some sort of hopeful narrative conclusion. Instead the monk chops his arm clean off and tells the kid to eat it. The kid runs away, so the monk just stands there are cries for a bit, probably at the realisation of how bloody thick he was for chopping off his own arm. I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And you know what this was all leading up to (spoiler warning for the end, but again who cares because it’s a rubbish film)? The kid has an entire village chase after him to kill him, only to fall into a ravine. The kid doesn’t die, which might at least give some narrative finality to his actions where we learn the damning life of being a monster that is beyond saving. Instead he becomes a monk with his life lesson being that people die because I don’t know, life sucks I guess. It’s such a frustratingly pointless end to a movie that would have been unpleasant even if it wasn’t so badly made. With that end though, it makes me wonder what the point of the whole thing was. Even if you like unrelenting grimness, which makes for a bad story anyway the same way unrelenting calm and peacefulness would, there’s anime far better made than this crap.