Jinsei can also refer to a 2014 anime series concerning an advice column, but in this case it refers to the full-length movie by anime newcomer Ryuya Suzuki, which was released in Japan in the summer of 2025 and has seen a modest release in U.S. theaters during June 2026. This 93 minute project was almost entirely made by just Suzuki, who is listed in the credits for all production positions except Sound Director; he even did the music himself. While he did not voice any of the characters, the seiyuu used are almost entirely individuals who have either no or very limited anime voice work credits and instead have more credits in live-action movies. Hence this is, in many respects, a very atypical anime effort.
That’s immediately evident in the visuals and animation, too. The animation style, which offers limited dynamic movement and stresses sudden shifts of expression, is perhaps most reminiscent of South Park. And while character designs aren’t quite that stylized, they are a far cry from anime norms. You would not easily visually mistake this one for any other anime out there.
The movie’s name translates as “life,” and that is, indeed, what the movie is about: the full life of a protagonist who goes by several different names throughout, with the ordinary options including Se-chan, Kuro, and Zen. During his elementary years, he’s deeply traumatized by witnessing the death of his mother in an accident caused by a dementia-ridden old driver and raised from then on by his stepfather (as his biological father, who was a complete mess but also a former male idol, also died), who never fully gets over his wife’s death himself. Life is not easy for the boy, whose trauma is poorly understood by classmates who bully him over how he doesn’t speak and always has a gloomy attitude, but a partial saving grace is being befriended by a new kid, with whom he eventually winds up getting scouted for a male idol group (due in no small part to him being the son of an idol the group’s manager once produced, and thus having decidedly good looks). But the protagonist never truly fits in there, either, and his life spins outs of control due to an incident of violence at what should have been his debut. He even winds up being a vagrant for a while before getting drawn back into the entertainment industry many years later. But his life takes even weirder turns as the 21st century progresses.
The 93 minute movie is a much more ambitious project narratively than it is visually, with the story told in chapters which progress the timeline but often don’t elaborate at all about what happens in between. That’s not to say that there isn’t some visual creativity here; scene montages are used to interesting effect at various points in the middle and later stages, and the visuals become more abstract and experimental in the movie’s final stages. It is also a completely serious and sometimes very dark story, with scenes of bullying, savage beating, graphic violence, suicide, sexual coercion, and even a brief scene featuring defecation. Language use is also occasionally at an R-rated level.
This being a virtual solo project will undoubtedly draw parallels to the career-starting works of Makoto Shinkai, and the comparisons and contrasts between the two are interesting. Both are uneven in production quality, but they are otherwise entirely different projects. While Shinkai opted for a more intimately emotional tale rooted at its base in more standard anime tropes for his debut work (Voices of a Distant Star), Suzuki aims for a more analytical approach with a much broader scope, one which, at times, is as much social commentary as it is actual storytelling. That results in this one having a much harder edge but also being much colder, as it entirely lacks the sentiment which underlies all of Shinkai’s works. That means that we can probably expect an entirely different style of work from Suzuki in the future, but that’s not meant as a negative. There are good reasons why this one has gotten a lot of attention, and it’s worth checking out if you’re looking for an anime work that’s decidedly off the beaten path.
Story Rating: B+
Animation/Visual Rating: C+
USA Anime 