MUTAFUKAZ

MOVIE 2018/ 94 min

French bande dessinée (comic) artist Guillaume "Run" Renard, who fell in love with the creativity and quality of the images, and ANKAMA, a production company that releases works in a variety of media including games and books, sent a love call to STUDIO4℃.

"MUTAFUKAZ" means "motherfuckers" in Hispanic gang slang (a coined word), and as the title of the original comic suggests, the content of the film is anything but straightforward. Set in downtown L.A., where the streets are filled with unemployed people and gangs are engaged in daily battles, this is a violent action film in which cute-looking characters struggle to survive to the death! It is also a gem of a buddy movie depicting the friendship between life-size young people, and an invasion science fiction on a mind-bogglingly large scale.
The director chosen for this ultra-eccentric piece is Shojiro Nishimi, a gifted animator who has long attracted attention for his unique style. After working as character designer and supervising animation director for "Tekkonkinkreet" and episode director for "Batman: Gotham Knight," Nishimi is now ready to make his feature film directorial debut.

In this film, his astonishing visual sense, exceptional drawing ability, storyboard design that highlights his mastery of storytelling and art direction, and attention to character portrayal are all on full display. As in "Tekkon," the overwhelming visuals of the fictional "Dark Meat City," created with art director Shinji Kimura, can be said to be the other main character of this work.
The extreme and realistic violence that could never be expressed in TV animation, out-of-the-box character modeling, and worldview that pursues a detailed depiction that is impossible to grasp after just one viewing, are more "free" than any other visual work currently being produced in Japan. Here is the pleasure that can only be found in animation where all the limiters have been lifted.


STORY
This is DMC (Dark Meat City), a dumping ground for criminals and the poor. Angelino, a.k.a. "Lino" (voice: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), born and raised in this city, lives in a shabby apartment with his best friend Vince (voice: Tokio Emoto). Together with his stupid and timid friend Willy (voice: Shinnosuke Mitsushima), the three of them spend their days hanging out and lounging around, but they have no prospects for the future. Then, a series of events occur that change Lino's disappointing life. First, he falls in love at first sight with a beautiful angelic girl named Luna. Shortly after, he is involved in a car accident that causes him to hallucinate strange beings mixed in with the human. He is also targeted by a mysterious group of black-clad men and armed policemen, and is forced to run for his life all over the city. Finally, in a desperate moment of crisis, Lino awakens to his super powers and in no time at all, he makes a bloodbath of his pursuers!

Lino and Vince escape with their lives and, with the help of Willy, hide in a ghetto full of gangsters, but the black-clad men are relentless in their pursuit. A car chase like in the movies ensues, piles of corpses pile up, and even a black, sludgy monster appears. What the heck is going on? Then Lino meets Luna in an unexpected place. But it turns out to be a cruel trap...