Dead Leaves

DEAD LEAVES (2004)

Directed by: Hiroyuki Imaishi
Screenplay: Takeichi Honda

Pushing adrenaline and animation action to levels of absolute absurdity, Dead Leaves is like receiving an injection of action heroin straight into the veins. You have my have seen loads of action films. You may have seen many an Anime flick. Yet, nothing will quite prepare you for the mind frying, ammo spilling, action ride that Dead Leaves delivers in its scant 45 minute run time. People say plot, character arc and some kind of message is always important to a film and can make an action film so much more than its set pieces. Bah! Dead Leaves jettisons all this and is all the better for it, giving us one of the most insane action films ever and quite literally cutting to the chase. It may be animation, but the amount of gunfire exchanged in Dead Leaves means it’s only got one thing on its mind: action.



The set up: a boy, Retro, and a girl, Pandy, wake up with no memory. Sent to an intergalactic prison for robbing a bank, the two decide to break out, the fellow inmates following in their wake. That’s it. What ensues is wholesale destruction on the grandest scale. What we get is: maximum firepower; car chases; blood; drill penises; lots of shouting; massive guns; sword fights; mecha droids; mucho sex; mad doctors; genetic mutations; tanks; bazookas; split screens; more firepower; more sex; testicles for a head; unplanned pregnancies; colonic irrigation; swearing; kung fu; enough explosions to ignite the sun; giant space caterpillars; babies born with 9mms in their hands; shotguns; a train chase; even more firepower and enough frantic editing to stir fry your eyeballs.


Words really can’t sum up Dead Leaves. For certain, it is mental but it’s also definitely awesome. Action is piled on top of action and props to the filmmakers for keeping it all 2D and not going the 3D/CGI route. Mad as a bag of snails, but so much action soaked fun. Check it out.