‘Inu-oh’ Review: Anime’s Most Out-There Auteur Electrifies the Noh Tradition

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticWhat Westerners don’t know about Noh — the classical Japanese theater form in which masked dancers gracefully interpret supernatural tales — could easily fill a 12-hour PBS documentary.

But who wants to watch that? Certainly not the audience renegade anime director Masaaki Yuasa is after with “Inu-oh,” a rowdy punk alternative focusing on two social rejects whose defiantly original performance style broke all the rules and elevated them to rock-star status, only to be (all but) forgotten by history.Among the most unpredictable artists of his medium, Yuasa specializes in trippy, off-the-wall anime features such as “Mind Game” and “Night Is Short, Walk On Girl” that recall the work of psychedelic toonsmith Ralph Bakshi at his anti-establishment extreme (“Coonskin,” “Wizards”).

Of all the filmmakers now working in Japan, Yuasa is the last one fans would expect to show an interest in the rigorously rule-based world of Noh — until it clicks that his interest lies in subverting the style’s rigid codes and conventions.

Basically, “Inu-oh” is to Noh as spray-painted graffiti is to traditional Japanese calligraphy. Set six centuries ago during the Muromachi period, when Noh had not yet crystallized into its current form, “Inu-oh” imagines how two fatherless young men — blind biwa player Tomona (Mirai Moriyama) and hideous outcast Inu-oh (voiced by gender-fluid Japanese rocker Avu-chan, lead singer of the group Queen Bee) — stunned the establishment by being true to themselves.