Tatsumi célèbre l’œuvre et la vie du mangaka japonais Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Dans le Japon occupé de l’immédiat après-guerre, la passion du jeune Tatsumi pour la bande dessinée deviendra finalement le moyen d’aider sa famille dans le besoin. Publié dès l’adolescence, sa rencontre avec son idole Osamu Tezuka, le célèbre mangaka comparé à Disney, lui offrira une source d’inspiration supplémentaire. Malgré un succès constant, Tatsumi va remettre en question le manga qui n’offre aux enfants que des scénarios et des dessins au contenu mièvre et sot. En 1957, il va inventer le terme gekiga (littéralement "images dramatiques"), développant ainsi une nouvelle forme de manga destinée à un public adulte. Fortement influencé par les thématiques du cinéma néo-réaliste, Tatsumi nous offre une vision du Japon de l’après-guerre

CANNES 2011 - A CERTAIN REGARD

A tender-hearted take on the artist’s life bracketed by five of his stories, presented on film for the first time, which are anything but. These are blistering, dark tales of post-war occupied Japan which must have been radical for their time and still pack a tremendous punch ... Tatsumi is wholly animated, with each story - Hell,Beloved Monkey, Just A Man, Occupied and Good-Bye - broken up by scenes from Tatsumi’s own autobiography (A Drifting Life) which are voiced by the artist himself. The styles shift subtly in creative animation director Phil Mitchell’s realisation of a cinematic manga, which is layered and delicately colour shaded, with backgrounds sometimes fading to shadow play. Tatsumi’s biographical segments are in full colour, while the individual stories play on tones ranging from blue to orange and, most powerfully, the stained sepia of Good-Bye ... What comes across most powerfully from Tatsumi’s stories is a sense of abasement and alienation in a destroyed, often post-apocalyptic landscape (Hell is about Hiroshima, and is reminiscent - or the forefather of - Ari Folman’s work in Waltz With Bashir). These are complete and nuanced pieces, each a novella of images, mostly involving an “everyman” figure who looks similar to Tatsumi himself, with his round face and button eyes (again, until the last). And they’re cinematic, despite being so rooted in the manga aesthetic: according to the film’s accompanying notes, Tatsumi gave the creative team detailed panels and framings for his work.

— Finn Halligan, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL