Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017)

Original title: Yoru wa Mijikashi Arukeyo Otome 夜は短し歩けよ乙女

The Girl with Black Hair (Kana Hanazawa) walks through a very long Kyoto night that somehow encompasses all seasons of the year in turn. She’s walking in an attempt to follow her fate, which to her seems to mean to have as many interesting experiences as the night can throw her way. As it turns out, there are going to be a lot of them.

Parallel to that, the Girl’s Senpai (Gen Hoshino) is trying very hard to be noticed by her, though in the most obtuse way possible. He’s attempting to “accidentally” bump into her as often as possible, until she must believe it’s fate, and clearly, they are meant to be. The alternative of simply talking to her is obviously much too bizarre to even contemplate.

The adventures of these two lead through drunken debauchery, debate clubs, the dance of the sophists, a night second hand book market, guerrilla student musical theatre performances and much more, as well as encounters with one of the most wonderful casts of eccentric weirdoes anime has to offer. Both our main characters may very well learn something about the world and themselves, the difference between egotism and love, as well as the problems with walking on without noticing what one leaves behind.

However – and fortunately - one of of the strengths of Masaaki Yuasa’s very non-traditional looking anime is how little this feels like a film about characters learning valuable lessons, but rather like one that treats life as an adventure and as a wonder. You can and will learn things along the way, but the way’s the thing.

This is a film that delights in the strange, surreal and the outré, throwing so many gags and ideas at the audience it should become overwhelming and rather random. Yet, the film never falters under the weight of its overboarding imagination – every random aside, every random idea is actually a part of a well-constructed whole, but one so deep as well as broad, you’ll hardly believe it.

There’s such as sense of joy and discovery running through the whole of Night is Short - a feeling of wonder, the air of the kind of night that indeed feels as if it could and should go on forever. Consequently, I found myself feeling happier and happier the longer this particular wonder went on.

Even better, the film carries such a lovely, compassionate heart below the loving strangeness, the funny asides, and the bizarre ideas, some genuine insight into kinds of loneliness and how it can end, joy is the only proper reaction to it.