Aachi & Ssipak

In the shadow of the South Korean movie hype that brought masters like Bong Joon Ho into the international limelight there was also a small but unique movement to emancipate the country as a quality provider of animated features in its own right, and not just a cheap location for Japan and the US to outsource their inbetweening to. Echoing the same development rival Japan went through when it emerged in the eighties as an animation powerhouse. Unfortunately, close to 15 years later now, 2D animation hasn't taken off to the same degree in South Korea despite the undeniable qualities of movies like Yobi the five tailed fox, wonderful days or this vulgar gem whose title I literally can't translate into English because it would violate imdb language standards.

Aachi & Ssipak is a satirical view of modern mass media with a few subtle stabs at North Korea and many not so subtle references to classic movies, spiced up with a very dark and crass sense of humour.

In the future the only remaining energy source is fecal matter, hence feces become quasi-religious symbols. Citizens get rewarded for their business with lollipop-like drugs that eventually turn them into tiny smurf-esque creatures called the diaper gang that can only live on these drugs and thus roam the cities and desolate wastelands as marauding scavengers.

...It all makes a little more sense in the context of the movie...

Despite the cartoonish look this isn't a movie for children (unless you're a really cool parent). It's filled with sexuality, graphic violence and vulgar slang (especially in the original Korean dub). Yet it never feels like it's trying to be edgy, it just has this natural offbeat punkrock FU attitude that you will either love or hate. I find it intensely likeable myself.

Give it a chance and you'll be rewarded with something very unique and unironically some of the best animated action scenes in recent memory.

Holy ****(pun intended) this movie never apologizes for where it goes and where is goes caused me some problems laughing so hard at 1 in morning amid housemates. I suggest you read nothing of the plot and just go in blindly, unless you dislike childish potty humor even if it is done in satire and with skill and class.

This is not for kids and not for folks who can't take satire and black humor that lives somewhere between the bottom of the toilet and the sewer.

Japan has been giving us lewd b-grade porno/potty toons for decades now and I have seen nothing that trumps this South Korean gem. It is way too much fun and very pointed. The subtitles felt natural and true to the story. The animation was slick but not overly proud of itself (and it mixed styles and types of animation fluidly).

This film is not for everyone, even I usually hate potty humor. But this film isn't really potty humor because it basks so directly in it's filth that is rises above the immaturity of say something MTV or Adam Sandler to make a greater point. In fact I wonder if the folks who made this weren't making a direct statement about North Korea. But anyway...

I laughed and loved it!!!

Warning: this film is vulgar and violent. If you can't get beyond the fact that there is much too much discussion of defecation and killing in this film then don't watch it. But for those who can overlook the aggressively adolescent fascination with feces and fighting will find beyond it a rather diverting discussion of political instability. Much like the Cambodia government of 1975 or any number of contemporary African government, the political authorities of the world envisioned by this film are facing an insurgency of fanatical children soldier led by a cult-like totalitarian leader. And much like the same governments, the authorities respond with equally ruthless violence and complete indifference to the well-being of their citizens or even allies. Trapped between these two equally vicious groups are our anti-heroes, interested only in making easy money. Their anti-heroic struggle against overwhelming odds to control the unlikely source of energy in their bizarre world should be an inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere.

Aachi and Ssipak is one of the new animated films coming from a foreign country and will probably be different, bizarre, life changing and overall, will be praised by anime fans world wide.

No, not likely. It's actually a new animated film from Korea, out of all those movies from Korea, This would be the first and only one I've seen from the country. It's different and bizarre, in that it's plot sounds something like "Mad Max", with "Idiocracy", "Robocop" and "Demolition Man" all compiled together. As for it being accepted by anime fans, it all depends on if you like the story and animation.

The Story takes place in an unknown future, where all energy is now powered by defecation. Yes, Human waste is what saves the world and supplies it with energy. The people who do this are rewarded with Juicy-Pops, sort of like a Popsicle with almost drug inducing side effects, the people get hooked on them, and everyone loves them.

As the movie kicks off, it introduces the Diaper gang, a group of mutants who can't excrete (How, I don't think is explained or yet, not knowing how come they can't, is a better use of words.) but love the delicious Juicy Pops so much, they hijack tankers carrying them to have them.

Within the first two or three minutes, this movie starts to go from a plot that John Waters could make with Adam Sandler, and moves to something that Michael Bay could make with Adam Sandler as the movie goes from excretory humor to an almost nonstop bullet festival as we find these little monsters, as well as average people want the delicious Juicy-Pops for financial and personal gain, and ammunition is spent faster than a World War II movie as it turns into an all out brawl with a mixed up plot to see what happens next.

Aachi and Ssipak are two poor guys whose lives are horrible, they barely have a thing but their motorcycles to their names. A mixed up plot with a crappy movie director (pun intended), the evil leader of the Diaper gang, the government, Aachi and Ssipak and a girl known only as Beautiful becomes the rest of the plot.

The plot is almost too crude to put into words, and as I felt this movie would go nowhere, it speeds up to an action plot and drops the comedy about 45 minutes in. At 1 hour and 24 minutes, it just about wears out its welcome, but because it drops off the bathroom humor about halfway through, there is more "plot" to focus on, which in this case means, watching bullets fly and ridiculous story to commence.

What does the movie provide to you, though? Well for one, it's not a date movie, it made be animated, but it's not for kids, and it's violent, yet cannot compare to Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira", but how does it sit so well to be watched by anybody? If you look it at, it's basically another film to be remade in America with some famous actors, since "The Ring", "Premonition", and all these foreign films have been getting adapted to American Audiences, give it to the Happy Gilmore production crew to make a new movie idea.

It also felt like I could be watching the future. How? With Ethanol, Global warming, and other kinds of power for the future, this movie feels like the future to me? Yes. I can't imagine we aren't much farther away from using defecation for something in society, just have to find a scientist who says it's a great alternate fuel source or something to believe it.

Still, I'm recommending this movie. To who? Well, You have to have a stomach for the plot, be willing to watch something so weird that you'd think 14 year old came up with it, and be willing to watch blood fly and have fight scenes that are so unreal, The Matrix couldn't even have fight scenes of its magnitude in it.

It's entirely inconceivable to make a movie like this, but it has been made, and you know what, it's actually not that bad. Be prepared for some humor that will make you feel like you repeated 4th grade and fight scenes that are simply silly, but it's still a good movie.

I give it an 8/10 Or easily a 3/5.

For what it's worth, "Aachi & Ssipak" represents a stylistic and technical milestone for Korean animation. Now, even if it might not be good or enjoyable, it does manage to drop jaws in the sequences that do work. Quite obviously inspired by the glut of web animation on the Internet, the film twines absurdity, political lampoons and sexuality into an incoherent mess that's just much too energetic and maniacal to take your eyes off. In his simplest form, it's about a ragtag crew of criminal elements caught in the middle of a war between the city's Big Sister government and a terrorist group called the Diaper Gang. The prize, ultimately, being the proliferation of an addictive candy delivered in phallic-like packaging called a Juicy Bar. In an animation so concerned with faecal matter and the anus, there's not much subtext to be gleaned from its fascination with derrieres other than its producer's willingly gleeful lapses into iniquity