While Studio Ghibli is celebrating the release of a new film by their lead genius, Hayao Miyazaki, with The Boy and the Heron, and Disney is celebrating their 100th anniversary in a variety of ways (including the film Wish), another powerhouse of animation is quietly celebrating their legacy. That would be Masaaki Yuasa, the brilliant director, writer, and animator behind some of the greatest anime films of all time, and a handful of brilliant TV series (Kaiba, The Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong the Animation, Devilman: Crybaby, Japan Sinks: 2020). Yuasa is a master of motion and space, and also one of the most fluid anime filmmakers of all time, able to adapt his style to various genres and emotions.

A gorgeous new Blu-ray box set, Masaaki Yuasa: Five Films, collects the major cinematic achievements of Yuasa — Mind Game, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Lu Over the Wall, Ride Your Wave, and Inu-Oh. As we previously reported about the Yuasa set, the release will include a 60-page book, which features Emily Yoshida’s essay and excerpts from Yuasa’s own sketchbooks. A 13” x 21” poster is also included, and disc number six will offer a number of never-before-seen bonus features. Each film has its own individual scene breakdowns, and Mind Game’s 2022 American Cinematheque Q&A is also among the bonus features, as well as an exclusive featurette with Yuasa at a Los Angeles speakeasy, titled A Night Out with Masaaki Yuasa.

To celebrate what feels like the most important and beautifully made home media release of the year, MovieWeb spoke with Yuasa through a translator about the master’s filmography and his process.

A Turning Point for Masaaki Yuasa

Yuasa designed the art for the new box set while taking a pause in his filmmaking career. He obviously spent some time looking back on his filmography while working on this box set, so we wondered if he’d noticed any interesting trends or developments over the past 20 years of his own work that he may not have realized at the time:

“Starting off with Mind Games, that was a project that gave me a lot of challenges and hurdles and obstacles that I had to overcome. But from there, I started going into TV series hoping that I would study and grow a little bit more. And then I started Science SARU [the Tokyo animation studio Yuasa led until 2020], and from that, I really thought about learning how to allow our staff to grow and learn. So I think a lot of different feelings are incorporated in this box set.”

I’m taking a break right now, but this is like a turning point, and hopefully in these new projects that I release next, I hope that everything I learned will be incorporated.

Related: Best Anime Movies of All Time, Ranked

Mind Game is one of the greatest anime films ever made, a kaleidoscopic and relentless story about a coward who chooses to act boldly during a shooting, and ends up dying but escaping the afterlife with a second chance. Eventually, he and his two friends are stuck in a whale with a very old man, evading gangsters. It’s an astounding piece of animation, simultaneously psychedelic and succinct. We wondered what was going through his head at the time (around 2004).

“I guess because it was my first feature film directorial debut, I was really focused on how to incorporate that sense of like, going forward. There’s just so much happening in the original story. So I was really thinking about how to translate that into animation and how to depict it in a way that would honor the original,” said Yuasa, who added:

And then at the time, Pixar was really rising, and 3D animation was like all the vibe, so hand-drawn animation wasn’t as popular anymore at that time. But I wanted to showcase that there’s so much more we can do with hand-drawn animation, and then incorporating digital animation can make it more interesting. So those were on my mind when I was creating Mind Game.

Adapting Animation to Emotion and Story

Yuasa’s hallucinogenic Mind Game didn’t lead to a career or Jodorowsky-like mind trips; in fact, Yuasa seems downright chameleonic in the way he changes his animation style based on story and mood. The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is gorgeously Parisian, while Inu-Oh is a Muromachi-period musical. Meanwhile, Ride Your Wave is a simple love story that is as heartfelt as it is heartbreaking, about a young surfer who falls for a wonderful fireman.

“I really think that I try to choose a style that matches the project,” explained Yuasa. “I also think about what medium we’re going to use, or what format it’s going to come out in, whether it’s going to be a TV series or streaming or a film. What can I do in that environment to make it the best way possible, and then what’s the best way to convey to the audience what the project is about?”

I try not to be perfect. Like, the projects in this box aren’t saying, ‘This is how it ought to be made.’ No, I tried to think about what we can do with each project to best bring out the best in it.

Related: Best Anime Shows to Start With for Beginners and Newcomers

Animators have different approaches: does the animation influence the story and emotion, or vice versa? “I try to figure out what kind of animation, what kind of visuals would really express the emotion of the characters in the best way possible. And I tried to imagine, ‘Okay, so if the audience sees it this way, are we able to evoke the emotion that should come from that?’ I think for Ride Your Wave, I chose the most simple style among all of my works, because I thought that was the easiest way, or the best way, for the audience to recognize those emotions.”

Animation West, East, and Live
GKIDS

Anime has had a profound effect on Western animation over the past 20 years, thanks to a variety of factors (from Comic-Con to Adult Swim). But Yuasa is quick to point out that the opposite is actually true as well — art and culture are in an international dance over time. “Japanese animation was also influenced by Western animation,” explained Yuasa. “So I do think there are crossed paths and global influences. But for me, as a child, I used to watch Tom and Jerry a lot because they used to be played on TV a lot. The way they move has really been in my head throughout my career.”

You can see anime’s continued influence in the West with the ceaseless live-action adaptations of anime titles, such as the recent One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Cowboy Bebop (all on Netflix). We asked Yuasa about this, and if he wanted any specific project of his own to receive a live-action adaptation:

“So, regarding the live-action adaptations, they are brought up as a trend in Japan as well. You know, the good ones are done well, and the bad ones are done badly. It’s very interesting to just watch the different ways that they approach it. Regarding my own works, there was an offer for Beast Claw (aka Kemonozume). But that sort of just went away. I do think that’s something that would be easy to make into a live action.”

In the meantime, we’ve been gifted with a treasure trove of Yuasa’s brilliance in the form of this new box set. You can purchase the box set from the link below:

Buy Through GKIDS