Filmstelle

Set in 14th-century Kyoto, Inu-Oh follows the friendship between Inu-Oh, the cursed son of a renowned dancer’s family, and Tomona, a blind biwa priest haunted by his past. Together, they reinvent the performance of Heike legends, transforming courtly recitations into rock shows. Their rise mirrors that of a rookie band: improvised stages, ecstatic crowds and performances that defy both political power and cultural tradition, all leading to one of the biggest and most spectacular performances in the history of feudal Japan.

Masaaki Yuasa has built a career on animation that moves like music itself. His films consistently treat sound, rhythm and motion as a single expressive force. Inu-Oh may be his most overtly musical work: a historical fantasia that reimagines medieval Japan through the language of the modern concert film.

The movie is a musical hybrid: traditional instruments like the biwa coexist with driving bass lines, electric guitar textures, and rhythms borrowed from rock, punk, and contemporary pop. The soundtrack is completed with the vocals by Avu-Chan, a Japanese singer and the voice of Inu-Oh.

This movie’s performances are staged like live gigs, complete with crowd surges and visceral physicality. Yuasa uses animation to visualize sound itself: bodies elongate, space fractures, and history bends to rhythm, resulting in a movie that treats music as shared experience.

Amos Herz