
2013 · animation · drama · mystery
Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa25m2013
Death Billiards is one of the four anime works that each received 38 million yen (about US$480,000) from the "2012 Young Animator Training Project." Just like in 2010 and 2011, the animation labor group received 214.5 million yen (US$2.65 million) from the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs, and it distributed most of those funds to studios who train young animators on-the-job. An old and a young man find themselves in a mysterious bar where they have to play a game of billiard. The bet: their lives.
Our read: Death Billiards (2013) reads as a sombre, kinetic, surreal animation · drama · mystery entry — measured in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Sombre, kinetic, measured animation / drama, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, epic, measured.
Everyone on the couch spins once and gets one craft to watch for. After the credits, compare what you caught.
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Everyone on the couch gets one craft to watch for. Spin the wheel to get yours. Sound on: the narrator reads your mission.




Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
“You want a tense 25-minute anime psychological game deciding heaven or hell.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if high-stakes mind games or animated violence will unsettle you.
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