School in the Crosshairs

Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi

1981 / 90min / DCP

Shortly before beginning his youth-oriented “Onomichi Trilogy,” Obayashi made a very different kind of schoolgirl tale with the kaleidoscopic, turbocharged live-action cartoon School in the Crosshairs, loosely based on Taku Mayumura’s novel Psychic School Wars, in which teenaged Yuka (Hiroko Yakushimaru) discovers not only that she has the gift of telekinesis, but that she’s going to have to use it to get the best of a gang of Gestapo-like hall monitors led by rival Masami Hasegawa and the insidious space invader who’s backing her up. An invigorating, everything but the kitchen sink barrage of visual effects, infused with its heroine’s spirited rebelliousness.