Genius Party Beyond is five directors given total freedom to spend animation budget on whatever obsessed them that year, no connective tissue required. One segment pairs a kid's flute with a living spacecraft. Another sends criminals to an island that exists only to humiliate them. The sequencing is brutal, it breaks tone constantly, respects nothing, commits fully to each vision for exactly as long as that vision matters. You watch it the way you listen to a compilation album from artists who have nothing to do with each other. Some segments will wreck you. Others will perplex you completely. Either way, you cannot predict what you're about to see.
Five independent shorts from Studio 4°C, each by a different director, make up this anthology film, a follow-up to Genius Party. A huge object comes down near a village of odd creatures, and it starts to grow when a boy and a girl play music for it. Violent criminals hunt for rumored treasure on Giants Island, find only disappointment, and wreck the whole island. A young child has vivid, strange dreams while his mother gets ready to have another baby. In a steampunk world, a young woman secretly and illegally breeds alien life inside stuffed animals until the authorities close in. An eccentric girl calls a boy from another dimension, and their shifting bond ends in a burst of visual fireworks. What links the segments is creative freedom: each director works in a distinct style, from classic anime to abstract, poetic imagery. Some pieces lean toward action and sci-fi spectacle, while others are more dreamlike and personal.
