One of my colleagues - a true connaisseur of all things anime - brought this to my attention yesterday: Studio Flying, the animation team that worked on Aachi & Ssipak, is coming back with a spectacular-looking project, Mad Monkey. The format if the film is basically a series of 3 OAVs (70 minutes total) that will be directly released on DVD some time this year.

Kim Byung Gap (better known as Kim Gap) is directing this singular work, which is already becoming the talk of the town - or at least of the blogosphere. Kim has gained an excellent reputation and quite a bit of buzz with the brilliant Aachi & Ssipak (2006), a first outing widely received - and acclaimed - as an exhilarating mixture of weird and cool. 

For the record, the official synopsis went like this:

"An animated film from director Joe Beom-jin about a futuristic world powered entirely by human feces. With the government anxious to control this sole, important source of energy, they install special sensors on its citizens' anuses to monitor production, while controlling the populace by distributing addictive popsicles."

Kim Gap is bringing the same kind of graphic, provocative visual and narrative material, without the scatological part - I think. A supernatural martial arts fantasy set in a brothel, the film deals with 6 super fighters who get together to go... to hell (and back?). Yoon Young-ki (Wonderful Days, a forgettable but nice-looking film that suffered a lot from lame storytelling) and Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) are taking care of the animation.