You want a kick-ass stop-motion animated film that is also almost as disturbing as a TOOL video, Here’s ya go! Fortunately, this one isn’t all prison-rapesy and depressing as that, just some twisted creatures who prey on a lot of, uh, less scary creatures? Some kinda stupid ones too. And one un-tasty robot kinda dude who may or may not be God (but he even admits, he isn’t. Not really a spoiler).
I’m gonna cheat, and just give you the premise presented at the start of the movie, slightly altered. The intro states that humans are immortal, but can no longer reproduce. Curses! Marigans were created to develop the underworld. 1,600 years later, they revolted. I don’t know how much later from that this is (it definitely seems a bit of time’s passed) but Humans want to know how the little buggers are still reproducing, so send an “ecological study” down to find out. This is achieved by dropping a dude in mech suit in a can straight down into it. That first step? It...Goes poorly. The rest is a fantastic journey of a guy’s head, weird creatures and mashrooms that are, well, a delicacy? I wouldn’t eat em.
One thing I definitely enjoy about ‘foreign’ cinema, in this case Japanese, is you don’t really quite know what to expect as the film rolls on. This one does a stellar job with presenting a lot of cool likeable (and unlikeable) characters as the story progresses. Harsh realities and some stellar comedic moments mixed in, with a strange fascination with creature dongs that at first is disturbing then is oddly logical, once some misinformation gets cleared up. Amazingly detailed environments and scope, fantastic characters throughout, and actually a great story for the whole family, at least in maybe a PG-13 kinda way. The schwang subplot and kinda evil creatures may be a bit too much for the youngins. But definitely can be appreciated on multiple levels for multiple ages.
