I wonder what Ryuya Suzuki found to be more difficult when he created Jinsei: being the sole animator behind a 90-minute film, or writing a no-limits story about a man and called it Life. Maybe none of it was hard as it sounds. Fortunately, Suzuki didn’t go through the Linklaterian, meta approach and was able to complete the project in eighteen months. What I found to be especially potent in Jinsei is how sure of itself it is to portray a story of bonkers proportions without compromising the integrity of its meaningful impact. Whether that jives with everyone is another question.

The beginning of Jinsei is paradoxically the death of another. In this case, it’s the protagonist’s mother, whose last word was his name. However, the protagonist introduces this film as someone who has been called many names throughout his life, which aligns with the variable perception and treatment that he receives. At school, he is called Shinigami (“grim reaper”), which is likely due to his reasonably gloomy persona following his mother’s death.

However, we also learn early on that the protagonist is Kurose Aoki, son of Eito, member of the famous music group BLUE BOYZ who had disappear from the spotlight following a scandal. This is discovered by an artist management group that Kurose auditions for when they recognize his facial similarities and dance moves. Largely, Kurose would seem like a misfit for the world of becoming an “idol,” which in East Asian entertainment culture refers to the trained perfection that is attained by boy/girl group members through grueling hours of training in dancing, singing, and media appearance. But he seems to gravitate toward his work ethic of his classmate Kin, who all but wants to become the next biggest likable celebrity.

Both boys successfully become part of the new six-member group, ZENROKU. While the film has the familiar tinge of the crash-and-burn trajectory of a failed idol, there is respectfully a small chance of correctly guessing where this movie ends up. Its unusual tone and cadence is pretty on point with Japanese animation, matched with a respite of emotion that you might not realize you have been holding in. In comparison with recent films, Jinsei might share the ebb-and-flow friendship displayed in Look Back or 100 Meters, a kind of distant warmth of surprising buoyancy as both characters traverse through life’s charms and hardships.

Forget a second about the difficulty in the process in making the film; it’s hard to write about a film without wanting to write about everything that’s happened, partly to avoid steering readers into thinking about a certain thing and partly because I wouldn’t be able to trace Suzuki’s intentional outlines of objects and actions that I’ve never seen before. I think there are implied things that may be easier to confirm on the second watch, but not everything that is understandable is also unknowable. For a character who was criticized by his manager for being “too blank,” Kurose is actually an easy person to connect with. His actions speak to the values that he’s held closely since we first meet him, and I think that aspect is an important fixture when the rest of the world changes.

Lastly, if it had only been underlined before, it feels important to hype up Suzuki’s vision in creating such a bold story. Creating a human with a subterranean radius is hard to obtain, and combining boy-band shenanigans with the uprise of political totalitarianism is not found in the usual screenwriter’s playbook. But the film, which toys with nostalgia with an outsider’s editorial gaze with comedy and horror flashed in between, is such an interesting exploration of what animation can be. In this case, it’s like what I felt when I first listened to Radiohead’s OK COMPUTER: alert and bewildered, but overcome with awe at our free will to create whatever we want.

Jinsei
2025
dir. Ryuya Suzuki
93 min.

Opens Friday, 6/12 @ Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport, and AMC Boston Common