Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2013

Japan continues to test the boundaries between live action and animation, and this flick serves both as a pop-culture touchstone and a new attempt to push the genre forward. The Garo franchise has been a hit since TV Tokyo first unveiled it in 2005 and it has gone through various TV seasons, a video game and even a theatrical release for some of the TV programs.

The current film received much fanfare when it debuted at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year. It is the coda for the second TV season, Garo: Makai Senki, which took to the air in October 2011. The visuals are notable because all characters other than the main one, Kouga Saejima (Ryosei Konishi), are fantastical animation images, but Kouga is human and thus rendered in a combination between live-action footage and precise, photography-like anime.

The story follows Garo, who has taken on the role of a Makai Knight to protect humanity. He must travel to the Promised Land and get the Fang of Sorrow to save humanity from the Wailing Dragon. Along the way he is befriended by the Krishna-like blue nymph Beru (Anri Okamoto) and the master swordsman/scarecrow Kakashi (Yuki Kubota). This is great fantasy escapism and a new take on anime.

English title: Garo And The Wailing Dragon; 96 min