Without any question, Yojouhan Time Machine Blues has a lot to draw me in.  It’s based on the work of Morimi Tomihiko, one of Japan’s finest novelists.  His work has already given anime the original Yojouhan Shinwa Takei (produced by Madhouse), and two works I love even more – Penguin Highway and Uchouten Kazoku.  Tatami Time Machine Blues is set – like The Eccentric Family – not just in Kyoto but basically in my backyard.  And this time around the adaptation is being handled by Natsume Shingo, one of the most interesting directors in anime today.

That last part is especially interesting, as the parent series was directed by Yuasa Masaaki for Madhouse, and this one by Natsume at Science SARU, the studio Yuasa founded.  Yuasa and Natsume are both among anime’s more surrealistic auteur directors, but in very different ways.  Natsume is definitely not copying Yuasa here, avoiding Yuasa’s trademark machine-gun assault of weird imagery and heavy background music in favor of something closer to his trademark minimalism.  With Natsume the surrealism is not an assault but a seduction – shots are longer, pauses more frequent, weirdness often seen out of the corner of the eye rather than parading across your field of vision.  In truth, this premiere comes off as something of a hybrid of the two men’s aesthetics, with somewhat mixed results.

Morimi’s own signature is (fortunately) too strong to be subsumed by either director.  The jackhammer dialogue he favors in this mythology is not my favorite among his works, but his characters are usually saying something interesting.  This is certainly not a sequel to the earlier anime in the series, at least not chronologically  – whether it’s an alternate timeline or not who knows.  As far as I can tell Morimi wrote Yojouhan Time Machine Blues intending it as a side story.  While the main release in Japan will be as two theatrical films (starting on September 30th), it’s also getting an episode domestic release on Disney+.

The core dynamic feels pretty familiar, even if the directorial style has changed.  Ozu is still the eternal oni tormenting the hero (known only as Watashi), Higuchi-sempai is mysterious and all-knowing, Akashi the eternal object of Watashi’s fruitless longing.  Ultimately this series always seems to come down to weird stuff happening in the midst of the never-ending time-wasting that is undergraduate university life (Kyoto University in this case) in Japan.  The impetus this time is the wrecking of the remote control for the ancient aircon unit in Watashi’s room (the only one in the boarding house), thanks (naturally) to Ozu’s clumsiness.  Life goes on but it’s unbearably sticky and hot – as is indeed the way of Kyoto in the summer.

When two Ozus are spotted in the footage for Akashi’s latest student film, it’s clear Morimi’s trademark magical realism (or science-fiction realism) is at work.  Akashi shows only Watashi, who swears to keep it a secret, but soon enough the reason becomes clear when Jougasaki dislodges the titular tatami time machine from the closet, where it’s been hiding for who knows how long.  Higuchi orders Ozu to take it for a test drive, and what do you know, it works.  No matter what else is going on in a Morimi setting, you know events aren’t going to be constrained by the limits of accepted reality.

Altogether this was a  fine if not transcendent premiere.  Some die-hard fans of Yuasa’s take maybe put off by the stylistic direction Natsume has taken, but I liked that take more than revered it, so it doesn’t bother me.  As I said, Morimi seems congenitally incapable of being uninteresting, and that applies to the characters he writes.  There’s word of an “extra” episode in the streaming version which may not have been written by Morimi (honestly I haven’t been able to confirm it either way), but apart from that it’s a pretty safe bet Yojouhan Time Machine Blues is going to be good – there’s just too much talent involved here to brook any other outcome.