Night Is Short, Walk On Girl: True Love and a lot of Alcohol
Released in 2017 and directed by the always incredibly talented Masaaki Yuasa, Night Is Short, Walk On Girl [夜は短し歩けよ乙女] follows the night out of two Kyoto University students, simply known referred to in the movie as senpai and kohai.The movie is originally based on a novel of the same name written by Tomihiko Morimi and is often considered to be a spiritual sequel to the anime ‘The Tatami Galaxy.’
The premise of the movie centres around the senpai, who plans to confess his love for the kohai on this particular night out but constantly gets interrupted by oftentimes comedic and sometimes unfortunate circumstances. Without spoiling too much, some of these scenarios include a chance meeting with the god of used book markets to obtain the kohai’s favourite childhood book, attempting to sabotage a guerilla theatre production, attending parties uninvited, and a copious amounts of alcohol.
Like its spiritual prequel ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ [also directed by Masaaki Yuasa], the movie also features an incredibly and mostly charming cast of characters ranging from a spiritual being that gives out loans all the way to a man who vowed to never change his underwear until he meets and confesses his love to a girl he shared a fateful moment with. It even has a theme song produced by Asian Kung-Fu Generation which in and of itself is no stranger to making music for anime.
With incredibly polished visuals and a unique premise that is both simple, funny, and yet also weird in the best possible way, Yuasa’s seminal 2017 work shows why Night Is Short is one of the most lauded anime films in recent memory.
