The Movie: Human Lost 「人間失格」
The Director: Fuminori Kizaki
The Cast: Mamoru Miyano, Kana Hanazawa, Takahiro Sakurai
The Story: Osamu Dazai’s masterpiece of Japanese literature re-imagined into a hyper-kinetic deep dive into human consciousness.
The Review:
The year is 2036 and nanotechnology has reshaped what it means to be human. Yeah, can't see this happening for real at some point. This movie is part Akira, part Ghost in the Shell, and part The Matrix all wrapped into a beautifully dark, dystopian future in Japan. The story is based off of the highly respected and uber popular novel written by Osamu Dazai which I honestly knew nothing about before watching the movie.
The animation is of course beautifully rendered with so much detail that is all original yet still very familiar because who hasn't seen a futuristic Japan ten million different times. Okay, maybe people who don't watch anime or Japanese cinema and do those people really even count?
On it's surface, the story is kind of simple and really has a lot of roots in the Matrix mythology yet it also has a lot of emotional depth mostly coming from the two primary characters Yozo and Yoshiko who are voiced by Mamoru Miyano and Kana Hanazawa both of which have have done extensive voice work within the world of Japanese animation. The bond they form over the course of the movie is also very Matrix like although Yoshiko is sort of a combination of Morpheus and Trinity to Yozo's Neo.
A lot of the themes for in the story revolve around what it means to be human as technology evolves and blurs the lines between the organic and the artificial and opens up a lot of debate on which direction we should be heading as these topics become more and more a part of our reality. One thing that is certain to come into play is how corporations will use these technologies to further their financial endeavors while enhancing their ability to control the population. Fun stuff, right?!
Human Lost is like an anime explosion right in your face and it's glorious. On top of that, the story had more of an emotional kick than I was expecting with Yoshiko's character being a big part of that as well as a fully realized and fleshed out world to explore. Definitely see this movie in a theater if you get the chance, the epic battle scenes are more than worth the price of admission.
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