Ryuya Suzuki writes, directs, hand-draws, animates, edits and scores a crowdfunded first feature that makes an existential epic out of the life of a pop idol, and feels teleported in from some future phase of anime evolution.
Plus IconJessica Kiang
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Courtesy of Ryuyu Suzuki It is oddly encouraging that a film like Ryuya Suzuki‘s “Jinsei” — not that there are many films like Ryuya Suzuki’s “Jinsei” — should be released within weeks of “The Odyssey” and “Disclosure Day.” Those two 2026 tentpoles are unalike in most ways, except that each will be the product of hundreds of people moving heaven and earth, starry casts and astronomical budgets at the behest of inordinately famous and commercially successful filmmakers, in order to elicit from us viewers the merest sigh of wonder. Telling the sparse and spiky story of a century in the life of a taciturn J-pop idol, “Jinsei” is crowd-funded, cost-efficient and hand-drawn by its self-taught debut writer-director-editor-composer. It is the opposite of a prestige Hollywood blockbuster primed to manufacture astonishment on an industrial level. But if this is the Summer of Awe, the visionary “Jinsei” belongs right there alongside them.
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