Kick-Heart

Overview: Masaaki Yuasa has a reputation on MAL SO high that it's actually difficult to find parallels. Old school, film snob magazines like Sights and Sounds will talk about François Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard in the same way that MAL and 4chan talk about Yuasa. That should give you a hint of just how highly he's regarded among part of anime community. However, there is ONE Yuasa anime that nobody talks about. The one black mark on his record that MAL apparently hates. Kick Heart is that anime! Plot: Kick Heart is a 12 minute, psychedelic romp about a masochistic luchador whois in love with a nun and lives at an orphanage as a priest. Basically, Yuasa was eating shrooms while watching Nacho Libre and decided to make this brilliant catastrophe. In Yuasa's defense, he COULD have been inspired by the actual story of Fray Tormenta AKA Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez. I pray for the dignity of anime that he didn't actually do this based on Nacho Libre...even though I kind of liked that movie. Stop looking at me! It wasn't THAT bad! Anyways, the main battle is between the luchador named Masked M (because he's a masochist) and a sadistic luchadora named Lady S, because of course she's a sadist. The luchadora is actually the nun that Masked M is in love with from the orphanage...because of COURSE she is. Despite the plot and characters being nothing to write home about, this anime is actually fucking hilarious! This is laugh a minute quality and its worth watching for that reason by itself. Art: The animation is unsurprisingly extremely fluid and is Yuasa's trademark style. Since this is a wrestling anime, I can say this is VINTAGE Yuasa. Overall: The comedy value of this anime goes through the roof when you learn the backstory. This was kickstarted and funded entirely by Yuasa's fanboys. They thought they were getting another Tatami Galaxy or Kaiba and instead they got this...thing. This anime may be the greatest troll move I've ever seen by an anime director. This is right up there with Inferno Cop and Ninja Slayer. The difference is that Trigger fans have come to expect stupid and over the top. Yuasa's devoted fans must have reacted to this anime like that scene in the Producers with the elderly, mostly Jewish audience reacting to the opening of Springtime for Hitler. The difference is that they didn't leave laughing and loving it. They left it 3s and 4s on MAL. Before this, Yuasa was someone I respected far more than I actually liked. After pulling this shit though, Yuasa is Mah BOI!

With a total of one episode at approximately 12 minutes long, this show is more than worth the time you will put into it. Do you like professional masked wrestling? Do you like characters with secret identities? Do you like S&M? Well, you should still give this show a try. This show (or episode I should say) actually manages a plot in its short run-time. I've personally seen shows that can go six episodes without developing anything plot-wise, so seeing a show with an extremely brief story, that still makes itself humorous and interesting, was very refreshing. The animation quality is good, and it fitsperfectly with the tone of the show. The sound quality is even better, with a dub that actually sounds like effort was put into it. Hell, by the time you finish reading this you could've watched the whole thing. Want a quick laugh? Go watch it.

Fun little short. I don't think it gets mentioned too often despite being one of the most recent of Yuasa's works and that's probably fair. Kick-heart doesn't have the same emotional impact his other works normally carry, instead the focus seems to be more on style and animation which are done extremely well. The story is simple and a lot of things are left up to the viewer to fill in. You could try spinning it in a way that would make it look like some point is being made or some theme is being explored, but that's just self-wank. The only thing that matters, isthe premise of a masochist wrestler falling in love at first sight with his female opponent. Unbeknownst to him she's also a nun at the orphanage he grew up in. What really matters is how this story is presented. The art is very on point. Rough, colorful, expressive but still smoothly animated and at times set to psychedelic music that adds to the whole surreal feel of the short and helps to make the scenes flow. Don't expect elaborate fight scenes or anything like that though. Since it's Yuasa you will instead get things like a man getting his chest slapped silly in slow motion or main character getting trapped under expansive folds of fat filled with gunk and bones. There a bit of more or less normal wrestling too but what you'll see is mostly goofy and eccentric. As a package it's hard to say this is very remarkable or a must watch but it's good for what it is and worth checking out if you care even a little.

I know that director Masaaki Yuasa is loved here on MAL but I was still shocked to see how many 8's and 9's this short by him was getting. Kick-Heart wasn't very good, guys. The short was only about 12 minutes long but I'm still giving it a 3/10. The story is bare bones: a masked wrestler is also a masochist who falls in love with a female opponent because she beats him up. Yeah, it's awkward. Don't watch this in mixed company. He literally gets turned on by watching her slap the shit out of his tag partner. Did I mention their names areMasked M and Lady S? S&M, get it!? Ugh, it's so bad. The anime is also pretty gross, like there's a part where M gets stuck inside the fat body of S's tag partner and he sees dead bodies and sludge in the folds of her fat? Kick-Heart features Yuasa's trademark chaotic animation style which I find grating. It was also really blurry and hard to make out some parts. I actually liked the design of Lady S, the fact that she was physically intimidating (part of why I didn't give this a 2/10), but again I just wish she (and the rest of it) was drawn better. Some scenes look like a middle schooler drew them. In the end M throws the match to S but it's ok S still gives the prize money to save the orphanage because *drum roll* surprise twist, S was the new nun at the orphanage the whole time!? Wow, I totally didn't call that twist the moment the nun was introduced!? Wait, hold on. M acts surprised, like he didn't know she was S...so why did he still throw the match if he knew his orphanage needed the prize money? It makes no sense. He literally just agreed to the match because he wanted her to beat him up some more. Again, this is an awkward one. Blech.