Mind Game

After seeing her jump onto a subway at the last second and getting her ankle crushed between the doors, Nishi reconnects with his high school sweetheart, Myon. Nishi is still very much in love with Myon, but is shocked to learn that she is engaged to another man. Nishi agrees to meet Myon's fiancé at her family's Yakitori restaurant, but members of the Yakuza storm the joint and murder Nishi when he tries to stop them from raping Myon.

Nishi, now dead, wakes up and meets a constantly shapeshifting god, who mocks him for dying. The god tells Nishi to walk into a portal and disappear from existence, which Nishi rejects, choosing instead to sprint past the god and reanimate. With a new outlook on life and knowledge of how the Yakuza are going to attack him, Nishi kills one of the Yakuza with his own gun, fleeing in a stolen car with Myon and her sister.

Acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa's debut film, Mind Game's constantly shifting visuals tell a story about living one's life without regrets that is unlike any other.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nishi Main

Imada, Koji Japanese

Myon Main

Maeda, Sayaka Japanese

Jii-san Supporting

Fujii, Takashi Japanese

Yan Supporting

Takuma, Seiko Japanese

Yakuza Supporting

Nishi, Rintarou Japanese

Atsu Supporting

Chuujou, Kenichi Japanese

Watanabe, Shinichirou Producer

Tanaka, Eiko Producer

Yuasa, Masaaki Director, Script, Character Design

Fayray Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Aug 25, 2025

SkyBlue1012

Recommended

Mind Game is an anime bursting with creativity! It feels like the result of a group of genius artists who truly love their craft coming together to create something extraordinary.

The storytelling is both hilarious and brutally depressing, thanks to characters brimming with humanistic, deeply relatable emotions. The four main characters are incredibly likable, and I especially enjoyed the chemistry and dynamic between them despite their vastly different personalities.

The music is like honey dripping into my ears, there isn’t a single bad track. Every piece of the soundtrack is an auditory delight.

The voice acting is impressive; you can hear the insidious insanity in their voices, perfectly ... capturing the madness of the situations they find themselves in.

But perhaps the greatest asset of this show is its art style and animation. They are truly S+ tier: wild, wacky, and intensely stimulating, like a jolt to your brain operating at 120% capacity. The sensation it creates feels like having your mind probed by something strange yet immensely pleasurable.

To the team behind this artistic masterpiece: you are all geniuses. I’m genuinely thankful you chose not to swim with the tide of mainstream trends or settle for mediocrity. Instead, you demonstrated fearless creativity and full confidence in your masterful craftsmanship, placing artistic expression above commercial success.

I'm grateful to have had the pleasure of experiencing this crazy, unforgettable ride.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 30, 2025

AlexdLuffy2003

Mixed Feelings

Personally, I really enjoyed this film the first time I saw it. From the beginning, it grips you in an inexplicable way. I think it's not the plot, but the artistic style, that keeps you attentive to what's happening at any given moment. It can be confusing at times since so many things are happening at once.

If it's your first time watching the movie or you've already seen it you should ask yourself if you really enjoyed it, instead of trying to figure it out if you understood the movie or what what was happening throughout the entire movie.

Personally, it's not a film I'd rewatch, ... but it's not one I'll forget either. It wasn't bad, but I don't think it's the incredible movie it was billed as. It falls just short.

It's a decent movie,but it's still Worth watching at least once in your life

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jun 9, 2012

mjharper

Not Recommended

I like arty and pretentious anime as much as the anyone. I think Neon Genesis Evangelion, whose seemingly innocuous mecha beginnings give way to stream-of-consciousness psychoanalyzing, is a high-water mark. Confusing or confused, it's worth it. And I'm a huge fan of Satoshi Kon's work, all of which pushes the limits of anime. I enjoy the challenging stuff.

So when I read several fairly glowing reviews of Mind Game, I was curious. But I'm not sure if we were all watching the same film. Yes, the art and animation are spectacular, shifting between contrasting styles with grace and ease. It's certainly a visual showcase. Yet none ... of the reviews mention the aspects I'm going to talk about below; and I'm inclined to think that beyond the artwork, Mind Game is really just art-house by numbers. Fill in the dots between seemingly edgy elements, and you'll have a great piece of cinema. Or not.

Take the characters. Nishi is a wannabe Manga-artist. Fine. Myon wanted to be a swimmer until her breasts got in the way. Um, fine. The old man prepares gourmet dinners and talks to his friends, the dinosaurs. Whatever. And Yan wants to be a performance artist and likes nothing more that taping balloons to her chest, covering herself with paint, and throwing herself at canvas. While trapped inside a whale. Er… what?

This is all meant to be psychedelic and avant-garde, I suppose. Subtle it isn't. For example: Nishi tells Myon a story about space explorers for whom the only source of food on the planet they were stranded on was alien excrement. But then it turns out that the space explorers were actually on a cell in Myon's body, and they grew larger until being flushed out of her system. You can imagine the details, I'm sure. This charming tale has the inexplicable effect of seducing Myon; I can only suppose that her eyes were so clouded with love that saw in it the unrestrained imagination of her beau, and that the story was meant to have the same effect on the viewer. Personally, I just thought it was tasteless.

Duly seduced, Myon and Nishi have sex. Fortunately, there isn't any nudity, as their bodies dissolve into a kaleidoscope of lines, colours and images. Unfortunately, this sequence resembles nothing so much as a 1969 sketch by Monty Python: trains entering tunnels and then crashing, waves lashing against the shore, that sort of thing. Only in the sketch, we ultimately pan away to reveal an inept guy playing the film to his increasingly frustrated girlfriend. See, the Python sketch is a parody. Which says a lot for the sequence in Mind Game.

It's as if the whole thing is trying too hard to be different, to be absurd, to be psychedelic. Towards the end all four of the main cast pool their resources to escape, rowing as hard as they can through the water-filled stomach of the whale—until their boat is broken. With only the momentum to carry them forward, they use whatever comes their way as leverage to propel them forwards: bits of wood... fish... a fly... Onwards they run, as the whale swallows successively large objects: a ship, an airplane (which explodes behind them), an office block, which Nishi has to navigate his way through, leaping over tables and through windows…

Then finally we see a almost identical stream of images to those which opened the movie, only with slight differences; so whereas at the start Myon caught her foot in the door of an underground train, now she doesn't. This is art-house by numbers again: repeat the same four minutes of footage with minor changes and in so doing give 'meaning' to the changes. What it actually means is not actually the issue; the fact that it's meaningful is all that's important.

In the end, Mind Game is a hodgepodge of highbrow and lowbrow; of comments about breast size and toilet jokes combined with literary references and pseudo-symbolism. Perhaps it wants to exploit the contrast in a kind of cinematic magical realism; but in my view it fails completely. Nothing represents the film better than Yan's paint dancing: it wants to be art, but it's mired in vulgarity.

Bought, watched, and offered for sale on amazon marketplace before I'd even finished it.
__________
Poor; I wish I'd done something better with my time. Its merits are few and far between.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	I've seen this movie twice but the second time was better by accident Charleeiza - Nov 24	2 replies	by Charleeiza »» Nov 26, 10:56 AM
	Anyone else seen it? Faust721 - Jan 26, 2007	28 replies	by Y-MELLY »» Nov 11, 8:28 AM
	Best sex scene ever!! Oreki777 - Jul 5, 2021	6 replies	by Y-MELLY »» Nov 11, 8:26 AM
	Is that a one piece reference? Wavees - Feb 6	6 replies	by Y-MELLY »» Nov 11, 8:25 AM
	Do the protagonist end together? theanimefreak95 - Nov 14, 2015	6 replies	by Y-MELLY »» Nov 11, 8:23 AM

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