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Jul 15, 2015 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Jellyfish Eyes is the directorial debut from fine artist Takashi Murakami, whose cartoon-inspired pieces have led some critics and art scholars to describe him as Japan’s answer to Andy Warhol. The film is rich in the artist’s creative imagery, but too thin in its storytelling to captivate a casual audience not already enamored with his work.

Young Masashi (Takuto Sueoka) recently lost his father in a tsunami; he moves with his mother to the countryside. Here they’re more closely located to his Uncle Naoto, who works at a mysterious (and suspicious) laboratory overlooking the town. He’s a lonely boy, until he meets a strange, floating sprite he names Kurage-Bo. On his first day of school, he learns that all of the children in the town possess one of these odd creatures—known as F.R.I.E.N.D.s—which they face off against one another in Pokemon-like bouts.

Jellyfish Eyes does a great job of bringing to life Murakami’s imaginatively-designed creatures through a convincing combination of puppetry and computer animation; the film feels like a kids’ video game, which can be read in both a positive and negative way. Each nonverbal little F.R.I.E.N.D. has a look and personality all its own, but their child owners, in comparison, are mostly one-note. The adults are even less developed: the caped and hooded villains, in particular, are indistinguishable from one another, and little explanation is given for their world-endangering misdeeds. (The movie does attempt to detail the reasons behind the creation of the F.R.I.E.N.D.s, but the convoluted explanation is so glossed over that it’s hard to tell whether anyone but Murakami fully understood it.) For the most part, Jellyfish Eyes feels like it’s holding back way too much information for future entries in the franchise—the second of which appears to already be in production.

www.jellyfisheyesthemovie.com

Author rating: 4/10