Director: Ujicha

Two friends, Bobby and Akkun, are looking for a shortcut to a neighboring village when they come across an empty theme park in the middle of the woods. And thus begins the visceral nightmare that is Violence Voyager. 

Where to start? Violence Voyager is unlike anything I, or probably many American movie-going audiences, have ever seen. The director uses a style of animation called Gekimation, which is a style where paper cutouts are moved in front of a painted background to give the appearance of motion…you understand what I mean. Ujicha used the same style in his previous movie The Burning Buddha Man. The actions of the cutouts are paired with real fluids in certain scenes, making my stomach churn. It’s a very cool, end very effective effect. 

As for the story itself, I was kind of taken out of it at first, just due to certain character designs and some other design choices that I am not too used to seeing, but once Bobby and Akkun find the front gates to Violence Voyager park, I was engaged to the end. Don’t get me wrong, I was still VERY confused and thrown off by many of the events to follow, but in a good way. As bizarre as the plot is, and let me emphasize BIZARRE here, it was still relatively easy to follow. I might find myself seeking out Ujicha’s other film, just to see what else was done with this very interesting animation style. 

Violence Voyager is out now on VOD platforms. ( DirecTV, inDemand, Amazon, iTunes, Vimeo on Demand, Vudu, FANDANGO, Hoopla, AT&T, FlixFling, Google Play, Sling/Dish)