Yuji (Hideaki Ito) is an action figure collector obsessed with obtaining the super-rare “Hellbanker”. His friends are all consumed with different areas of otaku culture and their lives are affected in various ways due to these obsessions.

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After accidentally bumping into a black Jaguar, a timid car rental clerk named Suzuki (Masanobu Ando) is forced to visit a yakuza den to settle his debt. An explosion renders all the yakuza dead except one: the unconscious Kuroiwa (Yutaka Matsushige). Suzuki seizes the opportunity to grab a suitcase filled with cash and takes off with a nurse who arrives on the scene (Hikari Ishida). The two must evade Kuroiwa and his bumbling minions as they have fun spending the money.

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A group of con artists reunite for an elaborate scam but the memory of a past betrayal causes them to have a hard time trusting each other around the cash on the train-ride home.

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Nozomi (Eiko Koike) and Lana (Maho Nonami) are two actress roommates who are up for the same role in a major upcoming film project. Their patience with each other gradually wears off and mild annoyance escalates into a final showdown of extreme violence utilizing an arsenal of common household objects.

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I didn’t go into Funky Forest: The First Contact with any preconceived notions about what it would be. Consequently I spent the first 45 minutes or so completely befuddled by its drastic, seemingly random scene changes and unmitigated insanity. At first I was taken aback by this film’s refusal to deliver any obvious punch-lines to the hundreds of subtle jokes strewn throughout—or any sort of storyline cohesion whatsoever for that matter. Over time, however, I just stopped caring about any of that. It’s important to realize this movie, although funny, isn’t really trying to be funny. In fact it’s barely even trying to be a movie. Instead, it just seems to be a jumble of random unfiltered thoughts, inside jokes, and humorous anecdotes seemingly channeled directly from director Katsuhito Ishii’s brain to celluloid on a whim. That’s not to say it’s not a quality production; quite the opposite in fact. It’s not often so much concerted effort, talent, and general care is put into a project as unapologetically absurd as this one. The plot is nigh-impossible to explain (although I’ll certainly give it a whirl) but over time it does kind of come together, albeit non-linearly, interlinking each character’s stories with the others either directly or through the people each of them has come in contact with. You get the distinct impression that everyone knows everyone else, although none of them really acknowledge this outright.

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