Masaaki Yuasa is a nearly unparalleled stylistic storyteller whose work you can spot from a mile away, and Mind Game was an early masterpiece of his that I return to every year – there’s really nothing else like it that I’m aware of. Whereas other Yuasa projects explore issues like having sex with monsters to jazz music (Kemonozume), selling your memories to upper-class space-Frenchmen (Kaiba), or how delightful it is to be drunk in the summer (The Night is Short, Walk on Girl), Mind Game is a crazy beautiful smash-up of mediums that follows 20-yr old incel and artist Nishi as he tries to take ownership over his own life.
