Lu Over the Wall

Hot on the heels of his pre­vi­ous fea­ture The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Masaa­ki Yuasa returns with a much more main­stream offer­ing, the fam­i­ly ani­mat­ed adven­ture Lu Over the Wall, which received the top prize at the Annecy Inter­na­tion­al Ani­mat­ed Film Fes­ti­val, beat­ing Japan­ese crit­i­cal hits In This Cor­ner of the World and A Silent Voice. After over a decade of Yuasa pur­su­ing his own unique cre­ative impuls­es, this film sees the direc­tor pulled into the trac­tor beam that tar­gets most up-and-com­ing ani­mé direc­tors: Lu Over the Wall is his attempt to ​‘do a Ghi­b­li’, and craft an ani­mat­ed fan­ta­sy in the much-vaunt­ed tra­di­tion of Hayao Miyazaki.

Play­ing like a fusion of the whim­si­cal adven­ture of Ponyo and the emo­tion­al tex­tures of teen dra­mas such as Whis­per of the Heart, Lu Over the Wall homes in on Kai, a reclu­sive high school­er trapped in a run-down fish­ing vil­lage by the sea. Some­thing of an aspir­ing bed­room DJ, Kai dab­bles with mul­ti­tracks and over­dubs, and uploads his musi­cal exper­i­ments online – caus­ing a stir when one effort, under the alias ​‘Mer­man’, goes (local­ly) viral. Before long, he’s unmasked and cajoled by school friends into join­ing a band and ven­tur­ing out to the aban­doned ​‘Mer­folk­land’ amuse­ment park for secret prac­tice ses­sions. There they rouse a mer­maid called Lu who has two over­whelm­ing obses­sions: music, and Kai himself.

The char­ac­ter of Lu is a fas­ci­nat­ing mash-up of famil­iar fig­ures from Ghi­b­li and beyond. Her very con­cep­tion sug­gests Ponyo, the excitable fish-girl who latch­es onto a human boy, while her design shifts and morphs under scruti­ny: part Ponyo, nat­u­ral­ly, but her wide grin and Bet­ty Boop eyes recall the star­tling gaze of My Neigh­bour Totoro​’s Cat­bus, and her green-blue hair, not to men­tion her perky, pos­ses­sive demeanour is odd­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Lum, the mag­i­cal girl­friend from leg­endary ​’80s man­ga ​‘Uru­sei Yatsura’.

It’s a barmy con­coc­tion of styles, and so is the film as a whole. Yuasa’s off-kil­ter pac­ing and charm­ing­ly wonky designs give the film an unpre­dictable ener­gy, and exceed­ing­ly odd, sur­re­al visu­al ideas flow freely from minute to minute. Mer­folk, like vam­pires, trans­mit their con­di­tion through bit­ing, so when Lu scoops up a ken­nel full of pets and has a nib­ble she cre­ates a clan of… mer-dog­gies. Lat­er in the film, a gigan­tic shark strides into town, wear­ing a bulging busi­ness suit and tiny top hat. This is Lu’s dad, who offers his silent ser­vice in revi­tal­is­ing the town’s fail­ing fish pro­cess­ing industry.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, such eccen­tric­i­ty only stretch­es so far, and at near­ly two hours in length, Lu Over the Wall slight­ly out­stays its wel­come. An extend­ed dis­as­ter-movie sequence, where the town is flood­ed, leav­ing humans and mer­folk to club togeth­er to save their shared home, bloats what could have been a light tri­fle of a tale. Along­side the twee tones of Kai’s com­ing-of-age dilem­mas – should he stay in the band? Can he sing? What pre­cise­ly are his feel­ings for Lu? – it feels para­chut­ed in from anoth­er film. Ulti­mate­ly, though, it’s mere­ly yet anoth­er stray idea thrown glee­ful­ly at the screen, like so many colours, char­ac­ters and cre­ative flour­ish­es – all part and par­cel of a typ­i­cal Yuasa joint.