Skip to content 
Director Takahashi Wataru may not yet be a household name among anime fans, but the man has already built an impressive resume. Miyazaki’s assistant at Studio Ghibli, he was one of the people who worked on the transition from traditional animation to digital, doing real camera shots, compositing and later moving into CGI, working on such classics as Princess Mononoke, inspiring and Howl’s Moving Castle. It created a storyline for a few Crayon Shin-chan films and directed four of them himself.
Last year, he made an anime version of Ishii Shinji’s very popular novel obsessed manPosted here under the title Obsessed withAbout a man named Giuseppe who constantly becomes obsessed with new things. The novel is so popular in Japan that there are even Mad Man themed cafeterias you can visit that display evidence of Guiseppe’s exploits on their walls…
So what is the movie about? It is about Giuseppe, a man who, when he starts a new hobby, devotes himself completely to it, to the detriment of himself and the environment. Treated kindly by most people as a talented but useless village idiot, Giuseppe continues to learn new languages, new crafts, participate in new sports… but when it seems that he can really pay off his efforts, he always moves on to something new. He can’t predict it, guide it, or fight it, and he’ll drop everything to follow his latest obsession.
One day, Guiseppe notices a young immigrant woman selling balloons in a park… and becomes obsessed with her. is it love Love, or just another obsession? Guiseppe doesn’t know it, but his happiness is now his main goal in life. And this goal is not easily achieved, because the woman is troubled and has a past. Guiseppe will need all of his many acquired talents to try to bring this obsession to any of their happy endings… and success is not guaranteed.
This movie could certainly pass for either a feel-good romantic comedy or a stalker drama, and it’s amazing that it does both while remaining sweet. And by sweet, I mean beautifully sweet, not pathetically sentimental. You get the sense that Guiseppe is annoying to everyone around him, but his daily battle with this particular version of fantasy OCD still makes him a character you want to root for, with literally not an iota of evil in him. So when the story gets a little creepy (and it does towards the end…) you feel more bad for him than disgusted.
The artwork used as seen here is not your average type of anime. It’s very trendy, the character art is very abstract in places, and while it’s a matter of taste, for me it made the movie enjoyable to watch. Takahashi Wataru can be proud of his first non-Shin-chan feature and I hope he does many more.
Obsessed with Played at the Camera Japan Festival in Rotterdam and currently travels to festivals around the world.
Do you think this content is inappropriate or violates your rights? Click here to learn more or see our DMCA policy.
