Inu-Oh

Japan’s Gen­pei War of the 1180s was so con­se­quen­tial that even 300 years lat­er, the Heike clan (the los­ing side, all but van­quished) was a pop­u­lar sub­ject for the likes of biwa play­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers of the then-nov­el noh the­ater. The idea was that by telling sto­ries of the Heike, their rest­less spir­its could be pla­cat­ed. Against this back­drop of flour­ish­ing per­for­mance arts dur­ing the Muro­machi peri­od, Hideo Furukawa set his 2017 nov­el Inu-Oh.

The book imag­ines a life sto­ry for title char­ac­ter; he was a noh actor famed dur­ing that time, but now few details are known about him. Now ani­mé direc­tor Masaa­ki Yuasa has added his own unmis­tak­able sig­na­ture in adapt­ing the book to the big screen. Inu-Oh com­bines his­to­ry, tra­di­tion, fan­ta­sy, and rock into one dizzy­ing­ly fun tale of the joys and heart­breaks that come with expres­sive collaboration.

Thanks to a deal his father strikes with a demon, Inu-Oh (voiced by Avu-chan, front­per­son for the ​“fash­ion punk” band Queen Bee) has an appear­ance that fright­ens most peo­ple. Most peo­ple, but not Tomona (Mirai Moriya­ma), a blind biwa play­er. The two form an act – Tomona on his biwa, Inu-Oh danc­ing, both singing – that quick­ly becomes pop­u­lar. They ignore the accept­ed canon of Heike songs, and in doing so help many Heike ghosts pass on the to the next world. And with each big per­for­mance, Inu-Oh’s body under­goes a trans­for­ma­tion to become more ​“nor­mal.” But the duo’s defi­ance of the pro­scribed rules for biwa and noh exhi­bi­tion puts them in the crosshairs of the author­i­ties, and tragedy looms.

Mul­ti­ple over­lap­ping themes are in play. We see how express­ing the truth through art can facil­i­tate social heal­ing – though also, as anoth­er musi­cal duo from the unjust­ly scorned Ishtar sang, ​“Telling the truth can be a dan­ger­ous busi­ness.” Inu-Oh’s meta­mor­pho­sis lit­er­al­izes how fame can facil­i­tate the pub­lic accep­tance of even the most out­ré indi­vid­u­als, and how such accep­tance can also sand down the rough edges that make peo­ple more unique in the first place. Inu-Oh and Tomona are both dis­abled and flu­id in their gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion, offer­ing myr­i­ad read­ings on the inter­sec­tion of queer­ness and non-nor­ma­tive bod­ies, cel­e­brat­ing their dif­fer­ence and sol­i­dar­i­ty among outcasts.

Yuasa’s ani­ma­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by a love of exag­ger­at­ed move­ment, but here he down­plays that ten­den­cy in favor of more ground­ed char­ac­ter designs and ges­tures, with a few styl­is­tic flour­ish­es like Inu-Oh’s ten-foot-long arm. The film con­structs an elab­o­rate sense of mag­i­cal real­ism, ren­der­ing Inu-Oh and Tomona’s per­for­mances in intri­cate detail while also imag­in­ing them in thrilling­ly anachro­nis­tic terms.

Com­pos­er Yoshi­hide Oto­mo com­bines tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music with dif­fer­ent forms of con­tem­po­rary rock to con­jure the songs, and the ani­ma­tors sim­i­lar­ly con­vey these sequences as riotous con­certs, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Hen­drix, The Bea­t­les, Michael Jack­son, and so much more. Inu-Oh plays out as if it is a mod­ern ver­sion of a song by an itin­er­ant musi­cian, relat­ing a blend of his­to­ry and folk­lore to us in terms we can understand.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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