Mind Game

Mind Game follows Nishi, a failed manga artist who reunites with Myon, the woman he has loved since childhood. When he visits the restaurant run by Myon's family, yakuza arrive to collect an old debt and Nishi is killed. He finds himself in heaven, where he persuades a benevolent God to give him another chance at life. Returning to Earth, he sets out to change his circumstances and win Myon away from a gangster, and together with her and her sister he is swept into a strange, eventful journey.

The 2004 film, released in Japan in August of that year and running 103 minutes, was directed by Masaaki Yuasa, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Robin Nishi. It stands first in Yuasa's list of feature credits, ahead of Lu Over the Wall and Night Is Short, Walk On Girl in 2017, Ride Your Wave in 2019 and Inu-Oh in 2022. The voice cast includes Koji Imada as Nishi, Sayaka Maeda as Myon, Takashi Fujii as Jiisan, Seiko Takuma as Yan, Tomomitsu Yamaguchi as Ryou and Toshio Sakata as Myon and Yan's father. It was produced by Eiko Tanaka, Yutaka Suzuki and Masarô Toyoshima, with 60 credited crew.

The film blends hand-drawn and computer animation with photographic elements and shifts freely in visual style. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 14 reviews sits slightly above the 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb and the 7.5 out of 10 on TMDB.