Unfortunately, there’s a fundamental disconnect between these musical numbers’ raucous energy-specifically how they’re visually represented-and the music that we hear on the soundtrack, possibly because these scenes were first choreographed by Yuasa and then scored by composer Otomo Yoshihide. Matsumoto's feather-light style of drawing is distinguished by its unassuming, but deeply felt quirks. The movie’s musical numbers were also directed by the visually restless anime director Masaaki Yuasa (“Mind Game”), whose trippy, dynamic visual sensibility and keen attention to detail are complimented by character designs provided by Taiyo Matsumoto (“Tekkonkinkreet”). Most of the music in “Inu-Oh” was sung by Avu-chan, the leader singer of self-described “fashion punk” rockers Queen Bee. Your enjoyment of “Inu-Oh” probably depends on what you’re most focused on during Inu-Oh and Tomona’s musical performances. Otherwise, a friendship between Tomona and Inu-oh develops during non-musical scenes, most of which are as dramatically flat as any incidental scene featuring Matushige’s character. The iconoclastic reputation these two fast friends develop by making audiences move to the beat of their music inevitably creates tension with a couple of stuffy, vain authority figures, particularly the star performer (voiced by Yutaka Matsushige) at the popular Hie-za theater troupe. Inu-oh has been cursed from a young age, and now the only thing that can heal his tortured body is a series of soul-baring performances, all scored by Tomona’s biwa (and some accompanying taiko drummers). Tomona’s story finds a sense of direction (and some urgency) after he hooks up with Inu-Oh (or “King of the Dogs”), a physically deformed amateur dancer who has one arm that’s several sizes too large and two mismatched eyes that seem to slide off his face like a Cubist painting. This adaptation of Hideo Furukawa’s book, The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters, attempts to represent the visceral impact and ultimately eulogize the loss of two singular Noh practitioners, the blind biwa player Tomona (dancer Mirai Moriyama) and the monstrous-looking masked performer Inu-Oh (real-life rocker Avu-chan). Some essential liberties had to be taken with “Inu-Oh” since the movie’s a feature-length cartoon version of a novel about a pair of suppressed artists from 14 th century Japan.
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