Yuji Ikehata

The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.

A long, long time ago, both science and magic existed in the human world. But God became afraid of the Human's unlimited potential, so he divided the world into two and sealed them apart. One world of magic and one world of science. Souta Suzukaze is a normal boy except that he has the Key in his body to break the Seal. The evil witch Cendrillon want that power and tries to take it. Akazukin and Val, a silver wolf, came from the magic-world to prevent her from that. A grand story of a boy who will lead a checkered life and girls in fairly lands has just begun.

A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.