Negadon: The Monster from Mars

Jun Awazu’s ‘Negadon: The Monster From Mars' is a 25 minute homage to the great tradition of the Japanese monster movie. The film’s most interesting feature is that the human characters do not adhere to the distinctive Anime aesthetic (big eyes, small mouth) and are instead engineered to look more true to life. Indeed, you may want to prepare yourself for a double-take or two as minutiae such as rain drops, plant life and human hair are rendered with such delicate precision as to almost fool the eye. In truth, the film is more like a manifesto for Awazu’s visual intentions than it is an original, thought-provoking story, but it certainly marks the director as a major new talent in the animation world.