The artists gathered at last month¡¯s Tokyo premiere of ¡°Sturgill Simpson Presents Sound & Fury¡± were as eclectic as the film they¡¯d all made: a 41-minute anime music video set to an entire album by the Grammy-winning Sturgill Simpson, a country music singer-songwriter from Kentucky.
After the screening, delivered in 7.1 surround sound so rich it enveloped like an aural duvet, Japanese and American anime luminaries including Koji Morimoto (¡°Akira¡°), Michael Arias (¡°Tekkonkinkreet¡°), Masaru Matsumoto (¡°Appleseed Alpha¡°), Shinji Takagi (¡°Steamboy¡°), Arthell Isom (¡°Strike Witches¡°) and Henry Thurlow (¡°Tokyo Ghoul¡°) stood shoulder-to-shoulder beneath projected images of scenes from the omnibus project. Standing tallest among them was a squinting Simpson, just in from the U.S. and still, he confessed, addled by jet lag.
But the mash-up doesn¡¯t end there. The film¡¯s overarching storyline was inspired by Akira Kurosawa¡¯s 1961 samurai classic ¡°Yojimbo,¡± about a ronin warrior for hire. Junpei Mizusaki and his CG studio Kamikaze Douga of ¡°Batman Ninja¡± fame directed it, with character designs by ¡°Afro Samurai¡± manga artist Takashi (Bob) Okazaki.
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