Mark Reviews Movies: INU-OH

Inu-Oh, GKIDS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 11, 2022

Every form and genre of art must have begun with some kind of controversy. Inu-Oh takes that idea, applies it to the origins of Noh theater, and puts it in a context that modern-day and international audiences can easily comprehend.

Here, the people revolutionizing that Japanese dramatic art form dance like Michael Jackson and hold concerts filled with anachronistic rock music, as well as intricate special effects. The general population loves these two performers, but the powers-that-be find them to be disrespectful of tradition and a bit too subversive for society to handle. After all, whoever heard of a man singing and playing a stringed instrument on stage while wearing makeup?

This animated film, written by Akiko Nogi (based on a novel by Hideo Furukawa) and directed by Masaaki Yuasa, brings history to life with the kind of energy that, appropriately, will likely be dismissed by more literal historians but that certainly makes it far more accessible than some textbook account. The tale here is one of legend, anyway, so the dramatic and stylistic licenses taken by the filmmakers aren't just appropriate. They're probably necessary.

The film begins in a modern setting, with a mysterious man regaling us with music, song, and history. Those olden times are, first, a great civil war between two competing dynasties in Japan and, second, the hunt for artifacts from one of those battles at the bottom of the sea near a coastal village. Yuasa presents this introduction almost as a fugue of narrative and styles, with on-screen text giving us the basic rundown of the conflict, water color-esque drawings depicting the battle at sea that becomes the stuff of myth in a matter of generations, and the film's main mode of animation, which is mostly traditional, hand-drawn (or at least a good facsimile, since the method is becoming rarer and the technology replicating it more convincing), and rotoscoped—with movement having a hyper-natural quality, since the animators use footage of real actors as a source of tracing.

The story, too, is a confounding concoction initially, as it gives us history, a brief flash of the birth of some apparent creature during a theatrical performance, and the tale of Tomona (voice of Mirai Moriyama, an actor and performance artist), who comes from the seaside village near the site of that battle and whose family earns a living by diving for artifacts. At a point in the 14th century, some emissaries from Kyoto arrive, hoping to enlist the locals to find a lost treasure of some import (The rivaling dynasties were fighting, in part, to obtain three such treasures that would give them power over their opponents and prove their legitimacy, but they're mostly MacGuffins here). Tomona's father does find it, but the mystical sword kills him and leaves Tomona blind (The character's perspective is inventively portrayed, as sounds form brightly colored and recognizable shapes popping out of the darkness).

A young Tomona goes off to find the men who hired them (with his father's spirit, voiced by Yutaka Matsushige, keeping him company), but along the way, he's distracted by a traveling biwa (a type of lute) player. Years pass in a series of instants, as that distraction becomes a career for the boy who has grown into a young man.

The other main character is the eponymous one, who doesn't have a name or a recognizable form when we first meet him. He's an aspiring dancer, watching a theater school and its proprietor (voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda) for inspiration, but the man who will become known as Inu-oh (voice of Avu-chan, the lead singer of the band Queen Bee) barely appears human at the start. With short legs and one lengthy arm, the child wears a mask that hides his crooked face. He and Tomona meet by chance as children, and in those later years, the two become famous stars, using music and performance to tell previously lost stories of dead warriors, whose souls Inu-oh can hear.

The point is less about the story, which is part legend—and legends within that legend—and part celebrity biography, and more about how Yuasa uses that foundation to put on a series of raucous, inventive shows. Nogi's tale gradually and then suddenly becomes a musical, with Tomona taking his biwa to a local bridge and gaining a following as he tells the story of Inu-oh and promotes the rising performer's next appearances.

Music here is driven by period-appropriate instruments (the lute, a type of bass, and a large drum), but the soundtrack accentuates those simple compositions with electric guitar and a full percussion set. Against that backdrop, it only makes sense that Tomona starts gyrating like Elvis Presley, playing his guitar behind his back like Jimi Hendrix, and adorning glam makeup that gives us the impression of David Bowie.

For his part, Inu-oh's shows are spectacles, with shadow puppetry giving the impression of giant screens on an arena stage and a harness allowing him to fly over the crowd and skim across the water at the shogun's palace. The spectacle is the point, but so, too, is how that tradition-minded theater director, the troupe of binwa players who are dismayed by their young protégé's technique, and the shogun himself (voiced by Tasuku Enomoto) see this new kind of performance as a threat to their fame, their power, and their need to uphold, essentially, the conservative values of society.

It's an old story—and not simply because of the setting. Inu-Oh uses form and music to put a lesson in history and culture into a lively rock-and-roll context.

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