Inu-Oh

Director: Masaaki Yuasa, Fûga Yamashiro

2021 / 98min / DCP

Inspired by the true story of a legendary masked star of the Muromachi-era Noh dance stage, as freely interpreted by Hideo Furukawa’s novel Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh, Yuasa’s visionary glam rock opera anime teams the deformed, spurned Inu-Oh with a blind biwa priest and musician, Tomona, who, by virtue of their talents rise, together from the level of social outcasts to the heights of performing the 14th-century Japanese equivalent of stadium shows, earning the enmity of the sitting shōgun with their fame and subversive performances. “Visually sumptuous… Retains a strong trace of the human hand and shows a deep grasp of (and pleasure in) the medium’s plasticity, all of which are too often absent in contemporary commercial animation.” —The New York Times