Ever since Osamu Tezuka's early 1960s work, Japan has become the controlling monolith of Asian animation. The King of Pigs dares to try and buck the trend. A Cannes Film Festival favourite from new-gun South Korean Yeon Sang-Ho, it's an unflinching take on class hierarchy and savagery in an inner city high school. Dangerous Minds meets Lord of the Flies? There are piggies abound, but the gangster terrains are far from paradisal.After a fifteen year absence, old school friends Hwang and Jong reunite over dinner. But nostalgia isn't on the menu tonight, through lucid flashbacks, the pair discuss their upbringing with utter contempt; both still psychologically troubled by the culture of bullying, whereby the rich designer wearing kids prevail and the lowlives are berated, spat on and beaten to a pulp. Not a moment too soon, their lives are transformed when the ghostly student at the back of the classroom Kim Chul teaches them how to fight back in the most malevolent way possible.Animator/director Yeon presents a truly vile story in the most attractive way possible, with the rusty Seoul backdrop lusciously well drawn and the school boys presented autonomously, yet each have their own striking gaze. Also working as the editor and screenwriter, the vengeance tale is presented in such a raw and aggressive way that the fight sequences are often uncomfortably palpable. A stunning quality for a animation picture to obtain.But this is ultimately The King of Pig's undoing. While some of the hand-drawn animation and raw emotional connect leaves you gawking, the gritty and unsettling portrait of school feudalism is just so severe. Quite rapidly, Yeon shifts from the profound and resonating to the hysterical, particularly a painfully shouty final showdown. It's a great shame. What starts as an entertaining watch culminates in a sensorily attacking one.Read more reviews at www.theframeloop.com

The movie tries to get in a really tough subject matter. While doing so, it does steer away too much though. The constant flashbacks (Rashomon this ain't) and the pace do not work in favor of the movie. The subject is very serious indeed (bullying) and is not to be taken lightly (no matter what country it happens and it unfortunately happens a lot), but while the movie does not take it lightly, it does try too hard. The moral finger pointing is heavy ... too heavy.The anime style is good throughout, but the movie still felt like it had double the running time. One other thing that made it penetrating and almost unbearable were the subtitles. The filmmaker is (likely) not responsible for those, but it does add to the overall dissatisfaction you might feel while watching this. A feeling that arises because you might feel that this subject matter could've been handled better.

although this received some good press and was supported by the excellent folks at subway cinema, this movie is heavy-handed, monotonous and badly made junk. i suppose it would be a novelty to somebody who has never seen adult animation, but otherwise don't waste your time. if you want smart and rich adult animation, go watch heavy traffic (bakshi), berserk, shigurui, my neighbors the yamadas, ghost in the shell: innocence or porco rosso.the king of pigs animation combines limited, inconsistent and ugly drawings (like king of the hill and beavis and butt head) with rotoscoping (tracing) and bad computer generated models. i saw this on the big screen and the animation is definitely the worst i've ever seen for a theatrical film-- and i saw cool world when it came out.like many bad korean movies, it is monotonously mean and there are stupid twists that undo the limited amount of characterization the writing provided (see also: the good the bad and the weird, the host, shiru). the characters are dull and one dimensional, the scenes are repetitive, the animation is awful and the overall experience tedious.

Oh dear. Where do we begin? Probably by suggesting that if you are going to get your movie translated and sub-titled into English, you get a native English speaker to tidy up the final version. Sadly, the subtitles in the showing I saw often made very little sense grammatically. It was like a bad web site translation where a literal translation is made but the syntax and context are all wrong. The inability to pronounce and understand the letter "L" also creating the wrong words; "fresh" where the word "flesh" was needed. The few women characters in the film can only be described as completely neurotic, screeching banshees. The animation isn't great either but I'm not knowledgeable about this genre and perhaps this is Korean style. The row of twenty-something Koreans in front of me did say much of the bullying and pressure issues were well represented. They did also spend a lot of time laughing and one of them was on his mobile almost the whole time!I am cognizant that there must be incredible difficulties for Korean film-makers to overcome and I hope they get the help they need to produce meaningful product that can be recognized as such by their international audience.