MERMAID MADNESS
Japan’s maddest animator, Masaaki Yuasa, talks Lu Over The Wall
Masaaki Yuasa is a Japanese animation director like no other. He’s into the trippy, Yellow Submarine stuff, using splashy colours, loose ’n’ playful graphics and cheerfully bonkers storytelling. His film Lu Over The Wall is about an unhappy boy in a fishing town who meets ebullient mermaid Lu, who’s forever springing and singing. It’s a sweet tale, with touches of Ponyo and Lilo And Stitch, with Yuasa’s madness mixed in. How many other films have fish skeletons on the march in piscine zombie parades?
In the story, the town’s older generation see these phenomena as terrifying threats, while the youngsters are more accepting. Yuasa says that’s his vision of how things should be. “I think people are getting more scared by these supernatural things. But what I wanted to express is the acceptance of differences – some people are different, but that’s what they are and how they are.”
Yuasa is already immersed in his next work – an animated horror serial, Devilman crybaby, based on 1970s manga Devilman. Starring a demonic superhero, it’ll be released on Netflix next year.
Lu Over The Wall is out on 6 December.