MFKZ

Con­tained with­in MFKZ​’s first 10 min­utes is a pro­logue of a dog let loose on the necks of a few gun­men, a foul-mouthed open­ing nar­ra­tion, and the sight of a crow peck­ing out the eyes of a rat. This isn’t your typ­i­cal 2D ani­ma­tion, and Disneyland’s a looong way away. Rev­el­ling in debauch­ery and ani­mat­ed with the angu­lar, scabrous scrib­bles of a grim­i­er Goril­laz music video, co-direc­tors Guil­laume Renard and Shou­jirou Nishi­mi have birthed a twist­ed ani­mé that’s heavy on the macho.

We fol­low Angeli­no, a spunky youth caught in the ruckus of his home­town, Dark Meat City. Togeth­er with an eclec­tic bunch of friends – there’s Vinz, who has a flam­ing skull for a head, and Willy, a scab­by cat with a pen­chant for barf­ing – Angeli­no dis­cov­ers the truth behind his iden­ti­ty. It sounds gener­ic, and that’s because it is, but it hard­ly mat­ters when MFKZ is such good fun.

Renard and Nishi­ma read­i­ly jazz up the ani­ma­tion: title cards acknowl­edge the pre­pos­ter­ous­ness of it all, colour schemes plunge into mono­chrome and blood-spat­tered action sequences are pushed to their illog­i­cal extremes. Less enjoy­able is the film’s treat­ment of women, leer­i­ly framed at every giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ty, or flaunt­ed as wafer-thin love inter­ests. It all coin­cides with MFKZ’s mas­cu­line swag­ger, but leaves a sour taste that no amount of thrilling ice cream van chas­es can get rid of.

Amid the testos­terone, a per­ti­nent mes­sage of uni­ty among dif­fer­ences emerges. A French-Japan­ese pro­duc­tion that boasts a voice cast fea­tur­ing Vince Sta­ples, Dan­ny Tre­jo and RZA, MFKZ is as inter­na­tion­al as they come, which is apt con­sid­er­ing the film’s uni­ver­sal mes­sage of accep­tance. No one is inher­ent­ly more impor­tant than anoth­er, be it a jet-black alien half-breed, a gag­gle of super­nat­ur­al wrestlers who ​“don tights and fight each oth­er to pay the rent and stave off exis­ten­tial bore­dom”, or a char­ac­ter with a flam­ing skull for a head.

Alas, MFKZ’s ram­pant synth-strut­ting ener­gy even­tu­al­ly exhausts. Once the cen­tral con­flict takes hold, it all becomes a bit preachy. State­ments on glob­al warm­ing and the evils of cap­i­tal­ism evoke more ser­mon than script, and when a main plot point hinges on a swarm of whistle­blow­er cock­roach­es, the stabs at pathos are dif­fi­cult to take seri­ous­ly. The man­ic inter­nal log­ic to the first half’s visu­al bab­ble is fas­ci­nat­ing. Renard and Nishimi’s mis­take is to then try and make sense of it all.