It¡¯s a familiar tale: a gifted artist finally gets a big break, only to find their creativity blunted by commercial demands and industry politics. I¡¯m not talking about the medieval pop star protagonist of Masaaki Yuasa¡¯s ¡°Inu-Oh,¡± but about the film¡¯s director.
The past few years have been the most productive of Yuasa¡¯s career, while yielding some of his least essential work. This anachronistic rock musical promises a return to the playful, literary surrealism of ¡°The Tatami Galaxy¡± (2010) and its 2017 spin-off, ¡°Night Is Short, Walk On Girl,¡± but comes up short.
¡°Inu-Oh¡± sounds amazing on paper, which may be part of the problem. It features character designs by Taiyo Matsumoto (¡°Tekkon Kinkreet¡±) and is based on a 2017 novel by celebrated author Hideo Furukawa, who wrote it on the back of translating the 14th-century epic, ¡°The Tale of the Heike,¡± into modern Japanese.
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