This Week in Anime

The Night is Long is a 90 Minute Bender

Steve
Nick, I'm sure you know as well as I do that it's not all that rare for the anime we watch here to drive me to drink. It is, however, unusual for those anime to do so on purpose.

Challenge accepted, buddy.

Night is Short, Walk On Girl might not be a new film, but it is debuting on HBO Max this week with a new English dub, so what better time to revisit the beerlight of this one deceptively extended night in Kyoto?

To call it a pub crawl would be like calling a tornado a stiff breeze. This was actually my third time watching it, and here I get to brag a bit about being one of the first people in the US to see it, way back at AnimeFest 2017. Yuasa himself was in the audience! It was pretty sweet!

Based on a novel by Tomihiko Morimi and directed by Masaaki Yuasa, it's pretty much a Tatami Galaxy reunion. You've got the same weird writing, the same complementarily weird direction, and a lot of the same characters/character designs. Like you said, it's more of a spiritual sequel than a real one, so no knowledge of Tatami Galaxy is required. I would, however, encourage everyone to also check out Tatami Galaxy, both because it's very good, and so you can properly appreciate how cursed Baby Ozu is.

Nick, please, I really don't want to be forced to drink THAT much right now. Let's wait a few weeks at least.

The man isn't wrong.

Yeah, once our main character (named only Black-Haired Girl, because Morimi has a thing about not giving his protagonists names) leaves the wedding, she encounters a steady stream of notorious boozehounds living it up and down throughout the many sights, scenes, and seasons of Kyoto. Todo there is one of the most lecherous, but also the most easily-disposed.

Oh yeah, it's a hilarious, and sometimes even beautiful, evocation of some of the most memorable nights I spent drinking in college. I was even lucky enough to visit Kyoto and trawl some of these same streets at night, entering these small dingy bars perched several stories up past damp narrow stairwells, and walking home along the river feeling pleasantly fuzzy. The movie captures the abundance of life in that district in a really lovely way.

Hey, what happens in Kyoto, stays in Kyoto.

Basically! He is That Guy to a tee, and he really never stops being That Guy. He has his own series of parallel adventures throughout the night, intersecting but rarely going as well as The Girl's libation-fueled exploits.

I also can't exactly plead to never having been That Guy myself, but that makes his many dunkings in the film all the sweeter.

Times sure have changed! Honestly the romance angle of the film is imo the weakest one. There are some nice sentiments expressed and animated towards the end, but for the most part it's too farcical to take seriously. It's also not really the focus of the story, even though it does run through its spine.

Look, if Morimi is going to write a character, that character is going to have a signature quirk and you are going to KNOW it, damn it.

At least he's a courteous enough degenerate to keep his grundle funk under wraps.

Yuasa really shines here in the way he exaggerates the already-fantastical tone of the segment via his visuals. Like, I absolutely love how The Girl's description of the used book market as an ocean dunks the entire scene into a literal one.

Abstract and metaphorical visual flourishes generously pepper the entire film, and, in short, that's what makes me love it so much. It's so consistently fun to look at, and Yuasa's and Morimi's senses of humor dovetail ridiculously well.

Ah, I was in our high school pit orchestra for all of our productions, so I guess I built enough of a tolerance up. The guerilla performances <>i>are also bad on purpose, but if it's not a joke you find funny, you're definitely not going to find it funnier during the 10th musical number.

Lucky for you, the School Festival Director agrees.

Now that's the kind of strong leadership the world needs at this moment in history.

The whole guerilla theater segment turns into a confusing cross-stitch of conflicting threads of unrequited love that very nearly ends with Don Underwear and the School Festival Director admitting to their mutual love. Before the film turns into a coward.

I just remember my entire row of friends being audibly disappointed during the premiere, lol. Also he's pink because of that nasty cold going around, duh. You know, the one that definitely isn't a metaphor for anything?

In retrospect, reinforcing and depicting the invisible connections that bind us via a highly-contagious virus hasn't exactly aged gracefully. Still true, tho.

Boy, it is true that Night Is Short hits different after a nearly-whole year of being unable to go out and have fun with my friends in person. Kicks the nostalgia (and mono no aware) factor of the film up several gargantuan notches.

Lol same. Not to mention the climax involves the Black-Haired Girl visiting all of her sick friends one by one at their homes, which is about as antithetical to social distancing as a single person can get.

Looks like those darn amateur fansubbers strike aga—hold on, I've just been reminded, by myself, that these are the official subs via Amazon. Hopefully the dub is a little more, uh, translated.

Oh that's just Johnny. We all know Johnny.

We're gonna have to reconfigure human biology pretty darn thoroughly to excise him entirely. But speaking of my fondness for the film's wild and freeform aesthetic, its libidinous and metaphysical climax is a bizarre animation delight. Stills simply don't do its kineticism justice.

But even Senpai at his internal chattiest can't hold a candle to Tatami Galaxy's protagonist in a normal episode. You gotta count your blessings.

Night Is Short's lack of cute tanuki is also a pretty big blow against it, I have to admit.

Even so, I adore this film, warts and all—a bawdy, booze-soaked shaggy dog story that crams four seasons' worth of antics and reflection into the lamplit libations of a single night. There's really very little else like it. I recommend it at every possible opportunity, and I hope it reaches some new people with its dub. Whether you come away thinking it's a literary masterpiece, or thinking it's lowbrow and masturbatory, it's an Experience.

Eh, who cares about (wrong) opinions when there's more booze to be had. That just makes arguments all the sweeter. Here's to drinking with friends again in 2021! Optimistically!