Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Saishu Heiki" or "Stink Bomb" is a Japanese anime short film from 1995 that runs for 40 minutes and was written by Katsuhiro Ôtomo and directed by Tensai Okamura, both pretty prolific in their fields. This film is easily over 20 years old already now and the story is about a young man who takes the wrong pills and eventually ends up as an environmental and military catastrophe. It is an extremely bizarre story indeed, but somehow it is actually working. Maybe my preference for this one is that I also liked the animation style here and that most of the characters were interesting enough by just being there and without really in-depth exploration and background elaboration. The twists and how a seemingly harmless story initially becomes more and more dramatic by the minute were both well-handled. You actually get curious about what happens next, to the protagonist and in general. This is not typical anime style, but still successful from my perspective. The voice actors did an okay job as well as much as I can be a judge of that as my focus was mostly on the subtitles which yours should be too unless you actually are fluent in Japanese. I am generally not that big actually on anime that isn't particularly recent, but this felt like a well-rounded effort that never drags and succeeds from all production value perspectives. A little film that is as bizarre as it is entertaining. Go see it.
