The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl

A night on the town in Kyoto turns out to be a phantasmagorical experience for two Japanese students who can't quite pluck up the courage to speak to each another in this surreal Japanese anime feature. She looks decidedly demure but can drink the boys under the table, while his would-be cool is blown early on by pranksters who steal his pants. There's a whole lot more to come, as the super-strength alcohol flows, and we careen through encounters with erotic-book collectors, a guerrilla theatre company, and a lovelorn classmate dubbed "Don Underpants" who's vowed not to change his nether garments until he finds true romance. It's certainly far removed from the well-worn formulae of most Western animated features, and Masaaki Yuasa's film has a definite "only-in-Japan" quality that's decidedly eye-catching and stylistically varied. It does reach a point of madcap overload where the underlying tongue-tied boy-girl relationship gets somewhat lost, but for those willing to go with its woozy, instinctive and unpredictable trajectory, there's a memorable night out in store.