This is a very quick post to indulge in publicly declaring my love for the anime Mind Game, and the goodness that comes from Masaaki Yuasa – his expressive methods shock me again and again into celebrating freshness, exciting originality, and the power of weirdness in really making cogs turn in the brainspace.
This short is quite scary, with a premise that related too well to my research project for me to handle. The image of the mother digitally represented on a mother-impersonating machine is undoubtedly one of the scariest visions I have seen in a while. The trauma of leaving the womb is presented in a stark and strange way that un-normalises this very common experience. Though humans generally don’t remember this event by the time they are articulate enough to express how it made them feel, being birthed seems to be well-regarded as nightmarish in concept, and I think Yuasa’s short has illustrated this imaginatively enough that it’s not simply repulsive to viewers, but instead comes out a beautiful and interesting piece of animation, where one can revisit fears of abandonment.
THIRD AND FINAL YEAR 