Mind Game promises to be an animated feast for the eyes and imagination from Masaaki Yuasa. The trailer promises a film that won’t be confused with Hotel Transylvania 3. The movie received considerable buzz from play festivals. The film finally gets a wide release on Blu-ray as part of GKIDS and Shout! Factory’s innovative animation series at the end of August. Here’s the press release with information on the bonus features:
GKIDS AND SHOUT! FACTORY PRESENT
MIND GAME
ON BLU-RAY™+ DVD AUGUST 28, 2018
“Fresh and strange. A tour-de-force!” – The New York Times
Los Angeles, CA – Provocative cult hit Mind Game from anime auteur Masaaki Yuasa (DEVILMAN Crybaby) will be released in a Blu-ray™ + DVD combo on August 28, 2018 by GKIDS and Shout! Factory, with bonus features including director’s commentary and a feature-length film animatic.
Yuasa’s first feature film Mind Game is a boundary-pushing tale that embodies the 1960s and 70s acid animation. The rarely seen film comes to the US for the first time with this release.
Buckle in and prepare to surrender yourself to an exhilarating and wildly entertaining ride in this gloriously colorful and unconstrained cult classic. Audiences will begin to grasp what they are in for early on as loser Nishi, too wimpy to try to save his childhood sweetheart from gangsters, is shot in the butt by a soccer-playing psychopath, projecting Nishi into the afterlife. In this limbo, God – shown as a series of rapidly changing characters – tells him to walk toward the light. But Nishi runs like hell in the other direction and returns to Earth a changed man, driven to live each moment to the fullest.
Bonus Features:
· Gallery: Background Designs
· Gallery: Character Designs
· Gallery: Mechanics and Props
· Film Animatic (feature length) – Blu-ray exclusive
· Scenes with Director’s Commentary
· Trailer
About GKIDS
GKIDS is a producer and distributor of award-winning feature animation for both adult and family audiences. Since 2010, the company has scored an astounding ten Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations with The Secret of Kells in 2010, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita in 2012, Ernest & Celestine in 2014, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea in 2015, Boy and the World and When Marnie Was There in 2016, My Life as a Zucchini in 2017, and most recently, The Breadwinner in 2018. GKIDS also handles North American distribution for the famed Studio Ghibli library of films, one of the world’s most coveted animation collections with titles Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and others.
GKIDS recently launched ANIMATION IS FILM, an annual LA-based film festival. The first edition took place October 20-22 at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood for a sold-out audience of 5,000. ANIMATION IS FILM embraces the highest aspirations of animation as a cinematic art form and is a vocal advocate for filmmakers who push the boundaries of their work to the fullest range of expression that the medium is capable of.
