Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
fh1478
Out Run Good For Second Chance
Mind Game is an anime about a clean start after getting something up the butt, and then realizing a whale is the best kind of therapy.
Masaaki Yuasa is a director that knows how, to make weird interesting stuff, that cannot be compared to any other thing, and how the animation complements the story, how free and willing to go out of shape it is.
A story about a second chance, a second chance that only happens if you take life by the horns, and finally do what you have been to afraid to do. It's a movie, when the moment it doesn't have to hold back, gives everything it has, in tempo, in its theme, in its sexuality, in its playfulness. It's a movie that goes 110%
Despite being so fun and playful, it can still go into darkness and depression, the horrors tha…
Read at the sourceGOODBOYMODZZ
I loved this so much. This has some of the most vibrant and expressive animation I've ever seen. It's more than worth watching just for the visuals alone. I love the way that this takes multiple different styles of animation and combines them into one big visual marvel. Even in the scenes that take place literally, the animation and visual style is still very unique and fun to look at. When it goes more non literal and expressive though is when the animation gets truly fucking insane and mind blowing to look at. The story fits the animation really well too, and it's a lot of fun to watch. We get to go on this crazy journey with these four really likable characters, and it's an absolute blast. It gets existential at points, but not in a way that would make you have a crisis. It's existentia…
Read at the sourceanotherburnedfox
"Mind Game" de Masaki Yuasa, es una obra que desafía las convenciones del cine de animación, siendo una lluvia de creatividad en su totalidad. Utiliza desde animación a mano tradicional, cgi, rotoscopia e imágenes reales. La estructura de la película es un caleidoscopio de imágenes, que la animación va entrelazando de manera brillante. Yuasa siempre intenta ir más allá de las barreras establecidas de su género, y habianto visto "The tatami galaxy" y "Ping Pong", puedo decir que esta es una pelicula totalmente con la marca de Yuasa en la misma. Los personajes están igualmente trabajados como solo él sabe hacer, son multifacéticos, cada interacción sirve para caracterizarlos y darles nuevas capas de profundidad, y el desarrollo del personaje principal está especialmente bien trabajado. La pe…
Read at the sourceSkyBlue1012
Mind Game is an anime bursting with creativity! It feels like the result of a group of genius artists who truly love their craft coming together to create something extraordinary.
The storytelling is both hilarious and brutally depressing, thanks to characters brimming with humanistic, deeply relatable emotions. The four main characters are incredibly likable, and I especially enjoyed the chemistry and dynamic between them despite their vastly different personalities.
The music is like honey dripping into my ears, there isn’t a single bad track. Every piece of the soundtrack is an auditory delight.
The voice acting is impressive; you can hear the insidious insanity in their voices, perfectly capturing the madness of the situations they find themselves in.
But perhaps the greatest asset…
Read at the sourceAlexdLuffy2003
Personally, I really enjoyed this film the first time I saw it. From the beginning, it grips you in an inexplicable way. I think it's not the plot, but the artistic style, that keeps you attentive to what's happening at any given moment. It can be confusing at times since so many things are happening at once.
If it's your first time watching the movie or you've already seen it you should ask yourself if you really enjoyed it, instead of trying to figure it out if you understood the movie or what what was happening throughout the entire movie.
Personally, it's not a film I'd rewatch, but it's not one I'll forget either. It wasn't bad, but I don't think it's the incredible movie it was billed as. It falls just short.
It's a decent movie,but it's still Worth watching at least once in your…
Read at the sourceTuls
Nearly akin to a hallucinogen, Masaaki Yuasa's Mind Game is a joy ride, an embellishment of his innovative visions running rampant in his head. Seldom does a director receive such an absurd amount of creative freedom and be provided with the opportunity to pour out his brains. To put forth a mess, a mess so stupendous and surreally captivating. As erratic and non-sensical as it may seem, Mind Game explores one of the most compelling themes - choice and outcome. At every point in life, we obtain a decision that will cause gratification or perturbation. We are often too late to realize our errs and, in turn, curse ourselves for our past blunders. Mind Game acknowledges this as it is habitual of human nature. However, acceptance of one's situation and living without regret is essential to fun…
Read at the sourceYunice
Mind Game is the most entertaining psychological-themed anime I have watched so far. It has vibrant visuals, often animated with different styles to portray excellent facial expressions and actions to suit the storytelling. I also appreciated that the makers put in the effort to include a lot of details in the background scenes, making it a pleasure to watch. The show was very fast-paced, giving one a very exciting feeling, and I personally think it was a very fun animation to watch.
I find that the story is easy to understand for this genre, as long as the viewer actually pays attention to the show and its details. Overall, I enjoyed the show very much.
Read at the sourceSmokingTire
This animated movie is definitely unique in style, however in lacks a narrative through line (specifically the ending). At the last stage of the movie it seems to end twice? meaning it showed us the title card two times along with a assortment of short animated sequences we have already seen before from the beginning of the movie.
I think with some light editing work this movie could valued much higher than it already is. I enjoyed the direction style and shot composition, the usage of colors was great to see. I think we spend to much time in the whale and the movie cuts off at an interesting point (what happens when they leave the whale?!) ie the gangsters coming after them. Of course there is some character progression with the MC.
Read at the sourceJJ_Wip7
"Mind Game" is an expansive journey through the complexities of life, beautifully brought to life through Yuasa's experimental and psychedelic animation. The film delves into the theme of embracing life's endless possibilities, showcasing how even the most insignificant of lives can transform with self-expression. The protagonist, Nishi, initially portrayed as a “loser” with unfulfilled desires and somebody who lived through life in a disassociated manner as expressed by his work of being a mangaka. Nishi embarks on a surreal adventure after a brush with the Japanese mafia. Through twists and turns that take him to heaven, Nishi discovers profound truths about existence and the subjective nature of our perceptions. One of the film's standout features is Yuasa's daring use of creative liber…
Read at the sourceThebruhhomie
-Mind Game review.-
Do you know that feeling that you get when you are watching a director’s debut film and you just feel exhausted and think that half of the techniques used were unnecessary and a way for the director to show off?
Well, that’s mind game for you.
To be fair, Yuasa had already occupied the chair of “Director” before as episode director for “Rakugo Kan” and director for short films like "Slime Adventures: Yay, the Sea!” among other important creative roles.
But Mind Game was his directorial debut for a feature-length film, and it fucking shows.
The movie is constantly visually stimulating, using eye-catching techniques to emphasize every single fucking action that the characters do or events that happen on screen, to the point in which many scenes would have benefited f…
Read at the sourceoyundefteri
Mind Game is a captivating anime film that defies expectations and immerses viewers in a mesmerizing blend of visual mastery, artistic prowess, and an utterly unique storyline. Through its stunning visuals, genre-bending narrative, and compelling characters, Mind Game offers an experience that is both mind-boggling and immensely enjoyable.
The film follows Nishi, an introverted character who breaks free from his timid existence and embarks on a wild adventure. With each step, the story takes unexpected turns, seamlessly transitioning between genres and styles, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. Visually, Mind Game is a feast for the eyes, with vibrant colors, intricate details, and a surreal aesthetic that creates an immersive world. The animation is fluid and dynamic, breathing…
Read at the sourceGatsu-chan
I went into Mind Game knowing nothing expect that this looks pretty interesting and wacky. Mind Game is fun, artsy, wacky, and touching. I had a lot of fun watching Mind Game because it does some weird stuff mixing the art and live action early on. The story is dark and wacky and I think it works well, especially if you are just watching it to have fun. Mind Game has a lot of cool artistic directions differing throughout. It starts off loose and then grabs form and is slipping unable to find a balance in its direction up to midway through. The art reaches a consistent point and stays there to tell the most structured part during the second half of the movie. I very much enjoyed the crazy unbalanced art styles. Mind Game starts confusing and ends confusing, and I love it. The story is compl…
Read at the sourceKempokid21
If nothing else, I can say for certain that Mind Game is a movie that appeals to my love for mindless weird shit. That said, if there's one thing I love more than mindless weird shit, it's when said weirdness acts as something to elevate something rather clever and complex, and that's what I feel like this film does remarkably well. While on the surface a lot of this can come of as wacky, creative surrealism that doesn't contribute to much beyond spectacle (and to be fair, some of it is exactly that), a lot of the imagery in this is also deceptively clever at how it represents its themes. Most notably, the film is about the almost endless possibilities that life brings forth and the way one's own indecision and desire to be overly cautious ends up stopping so many outcomes from happening,…
Read at the sourceFiviG
First things first, this is definitely not a movie for everyone but also a movie for anyone. Such that, not everyone will enjoy this film but it has a broad enough message that literally anyone could appreciate it.
There are many things to be said about Mind Game, one of the most important is that it was directed by Masaaki Yuasa. I have only recently become aware of Yuasa and from his filmography that I have seen, one thing is clear: he is very good at showing not telling. In such that, when he works on a project he likes to use animation as an asset to tell the story not to just be there because it's the medium he works in. I believe Yuasa (for the most part) depicts stories in such a way that it's necessary they are animated.
This idea is important to Mind Game because at it's core i…
Read at the sourceWhiteWolfKiba
OK guys I'm gonna attempt the impossible and summarize/review Mind Game, the directorial debut of one Masaaki Yuasa (Ping Pong, Lu Over The Wall, Night Is Short, Walk On Girl). This movie is very far out there, very psychedelic, very experimental in nature. It employs various animation styles, CGI, and even real people's faces plastered onto animated bodies at times!? Yes the film is weird to say the least. I'd say the shifts in animation style are used at key moments to convey emotion, though. For example, in a scene where Nishi finally confesses his feelings to the woman of his dreams, a live action face suddenly appears on his drawn body screaming, "You should marry me, not him!!!" I don't mean to sound like a broken record but I don't like Yuasa's low-detail animation style because it…
Read at the sourceTerajima
A prodigy of imagination, animation and visual inventiveness, the only 'but' I put it is that it lasts 100 minutes, I think that something so extreme for more than an hour ends quenching, as the film progresses I was forgeting all those details that have been seen, it innovates so much in the animation that I think a medium-length movie would have been better.
The other flaw I see is that the story is not up to its extraordinary visual shape, it is a film of great artistic and visual maturity, but that sometimes falls into the typical nonsense of manga and anime world; Perhaps the bad thing is not the depth of the message, which it has it, but the way in which that message is told.
An interesting film, a breath of fresh air within the world of animation.
Read at the sourceAssthete
How common it is to see works trying to tackle as many ideas as possible while failing to actually offer any insight. They display various signifiers for viewers to rejoice in locating, but in the end do virtually nothing with them. Mind Game happily decides for the exact opposite and rides on the simplest of themes, the most universal warm up advice conceived by man: live life to the fullest. What it does with that, however, is of such excellence anyone with minimal appreciation for animation will be astonished. Yuasa has this ability to make every visual facet, however strange, feel deliberate and thoughtful. Not always (Kaiba), but definitely noticeable throughout his career. More noticeable though is his capacity to effortlessly capture emotions through imagery better than most around.…
Read at the sourceThedude3445
(Review originally from Letterboxd)
After three watches, I still feel like I haven't even breached the surface of what Mind Game has to offer. There's so much content to unpack in such a short time span that I don't think you can get a real amount of it without actually devoting some time to studying it. This is the kind of movie that you could design an entire college course around.
The final montage, "This story has never ended," is one of the most narratively ambitious things ever put to film and I am not sure if something like it has ever been attempted before or since.
It has been a really tough battle in my mind for which of Masaaki Yuasa's three films is his best. Right now, the unbridled energy and positivity in Night is Short, Walk on Girl takes the crown, but Lu Over the Wall…
Read at the sourceK-e-v
This is what happens when you take wild, untamed ambition and boundless imagination and toss them into a simmering cauldron for it just to boil over and into your goddamn eyes like a concentrated dose of animated LSD. Very much a kaleidoscopic head-fuck, Yuasa's MIND GAME is a film about seizing the moment and coming to terms with your own self, but it's also about the ceaseless mythos of human emotion and connection - lives on top of lives on top of lives. Decisions that shape us happen long before we're born, and the ones we make will mold others long after we're gone, our stories neverending. Possibilites abound, and MIND GAME suggests that every one is a story worth living and that is so unabashedly optimistic I might just fucking break down and cry.
Read at the sourcecomiclove
Mind Game is the debut project of Masaaki Yuasa, a [somewhat] niche anime director/writer. This project definitely shows how much promise he had at the 'true' start of his career, with a complex-simple plot (to be explained later) supplemented by heartwarming themes, 'unique' (for lack of a better term) artwork, a solid soundtrack, and quirky characters.
[Story - 8]
The story here is rather simple honestly, but told in an increasingly complex way. It follows a typical 20-year-old loser/wannabe-mangaka named Nishi, who still crushes on a childhood friend. After encountering her one night and visiting her family's diner, he is suddenly dragged into a rather bizarre situation. After having (what appears to be, at least) a split-second revelation in his mind, he starts to truly become the pe…
Read at the source
