Film REVIEW #SLA: Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 (2025) - ★★★★★

Mix Up Theatre (Stewart)
4 hours ago
2 min read

Part of Scotland Loves Anime Festival

Directors & Writers: Seishiro Nagaya, Nobukage Kimura, Nobuyuki Takeuchi, Naoyo Ando, Tetsuaki Watanabe, Kazuaki Terasawa, Shu Honma

based on Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Genre: Animation, Drama, Fantasy

Themes: Anime Animation, Hand Drawn Animation, Shonen Anime Animation

8 short stories created by Tatsuki Fujimoto when he was 17 - 26 years old

Stewart - ★★★★★

"A wild, surreal journey through 8 fantastic stories from Tatsuki Fujimoto. The animation and music choice is brilliant throughout.

Everyone will have their favourites but highlights for me were...

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin' in the Schoolyard - a weird and hilarious look at the aftermath of an alien invasion where two humans remain in disguise. There's lots of fun here seeing the aliens taking up human activities. Nice twists in the story as well. And very funny to have a Totoro style song play us out.

Sasaki Stopped a Bullet + Love is Blind - Really funny shorts where love conquers all in unusual manners. The audience really lapped these two up as well.

The rest are all fantastically bizarre and fun - the only low point was the message behind Woke-Up-As-A-Girl Syndrome which seemed to imply that boys crying was "girly". Probably not the best message to be sending out to boys and young men - so perhaps a little behind here - though the animation was still great.

Overall a brilliant series of short films which was great to see at the wonderful Scotland Loves Anime festival."

Have you seen it?

Mix Up Theatre Chart Position: #3

Like this? Try these!....

Your Name. (2016) - #10 - ★★★★★
Inside Out (2015) - #170 - ★★★★
One Piece (1999 TV) - n/a
Inuyasha (2000 TV) - n/a
Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011 TV) - n/a

The anime classic Your Name has a much better gender swap tale. There's some fun creative anime shows out there so try something like One Piece. Meanwhile Inside Out is one of Disney's most creative and surreal movies always worth a rewatch with great character designs.

Have you seen these?...