Watching 'Animal World'

Animal World is the 2018 Chinese film that is based on the manga Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. The manga has had two anime adaptations and two live action adaptations in Japan starring Tatsuya Fujiwara as Kaiji. Animal World stars Yi Feng Li as the lead in the film, Dong Yu Zhou as the romantic interest while Michael Douglas plays the antagonist. It is both written and directed by Yan Han, and is his third directorial effort. The film clocks in at two hours and twelve minutes.

Kaiji is a property that has been on my to read and to watch list for a couple of years now, and one that I have been putting off for one reason or another. As such I am entering this film with a fresh slate with no prior expectations on what the story is and how it should be. That being said I have read the summary of the first arc prior to this writing to see if the basic narrative beats were followed in the film.

Zheng Kaisi is a young man wandering through life working in order to keep up with the medical bills to keep his mother on life support. His childhood friend and love interest in the film Liu Qing is a nurse at the hospital that his mother is in, and as a result of his inability to pay all the bills helps him on occasion. A friend of his approaches him with the intention of helping him with money only to find that he had been coerced into cosigning a loan which Kaisi is dragged into. When the loan is not paid back Kaisi is met by Anderson who explains the situation he is in, and ends up on a ship in international waters playing a high stakes game of rock-paper-scissors. All this adheres to the plot of the original manga.

The film has occasional cutaways to a clown with two swords that looks like Ronald McDonald’s more extreme younger brother, mowing down monsters in a train that looks as if certain shots had been lifted directly from the train fight in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch. These same monsters come to the real world in the form of Kaisi’s cognition when facing tough odds. This clown is what the film starts with in the form of an animated tv show within the film universe that is animated in the distinct art style of Fukumoto.

This film is a visual treat, the cinematography is outstanding, the visual effects are exciting and fit the world that the narrative takes place in, the bright neon colors of the second world are vivid and stand as a stark contrast to the real world, and the set design of the film is immaculate. This film was made for $50 million, and you can see every penny of it on screen. When we are in the setting for the actual rock-paper-scissors tournament the room is wonderfully detailed, and beautiful to look at. So much so that it has a certain grandeur to it. When the CGI effects and characters interact with the practical world there is a weight to them that makes them believable in the context of the film. When the clown is fighting in the train, it is extremely stylized with purpose behind every shot. In addition a massive bonus in the film is the fact that you can actually see what is happening on screen unlike most of the fast paced action we see in films today. There is also a car chase which was beyond exhilarating to watch.

The narrative is executed well enough. When the story needs to elevate the intensity, it manages to do so with ease, even though we are talking about a game of rock-paper-scissor. The unease you feel when the time limit is approaching is present. There is always the feeling of a looming threat over each of the characters heads as we see how each of them work in the hopes of surviving the night. What makes the situation less intense is the fact that we are not shown the consequences—rather we are told. As such I personally would have preferred to have seen one or more of the central characters have some of the consequences enacted on them to really drive home the gravity of the situation. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor gripe as we are shown these things happen to nameless characters.

The film also has the habit of introducing characters and completely forgetting about them for long stretches of time 'til even I as a viewer forgot about them 'til they were brought up again later on in the film, and as a result of that, many of the characters seemed one note with little to no character development. With that being said, there was a character who had a great amount of character development and character progression, Kaisi himself. As such my qualms with the way the rest of the characters are handled are significantly lessened as I get to see how Kaisi changes through the night and who he is as a character. The chemistry between the two romantic leads was not always firing on all cylinders; however when it was, the two were wonderful to watch.

The soundtrack is something that is right up my alley. It is predominantly a metal soundtrack, and at times took me back to the early 2000’s when Nu Metal was at its height, yet when it needs to be tender it manages to be so. It is composed by Neal Acree, who did music in the Overwatch, Diablo 3, and Warcraft gaming franchises, and Michael Tuller who has previous worked in the music department in movies and shows such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mr. Robot.

The areas where this film excels at are without a doubt the technical aspects of filmmaking. The direction, the cinematography, the visual effects, the editing, and the music. Beyond that compared to the high quality of the production, the standard of the narrative, and the characterization of the side characters in particular fall short, though not by much. While the narrative has some intrigue it becomes quite predictable as the film carries on even to the point that you are able to predict the plot twist at the end well before the third act even begins.

This is a film that caters to very particular tastes when it comes to film watching habits, yet is one that I still recommend as there is a very good time to be had with this film, and what it does right far out weights the areas that fall short. Animal World is available to watch on Netflix.