Based on Robin Nishi’s underground manga, Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game is a singularly daring first feature that follows a comic book artist on a surrealistic adventure from death and back again, through the belly of a whale, past childhood crushes, and trapped old men. Technically surreal and aesthetically defying, Mind Game blends flat animation, CGI, and digitally-painted live action into a roughly hewn, artistically exaggerated, cult masterpiece that is unlike anything in Japanese anime and global animation had ever seen.