General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Dead Leaves (DEAD LEAVES)

Dead Leaves (DEAD LEAVES; デッドリーブス) is a 2004 Japanese science-fiction action animated film about two amnesiacs, Pandy and Retro, who are imprisoned in a lunar penal colony and lead a break-out while recovering memories of their past as secret investigators. It was the directorial debut of Hiroyuki Imaishi, with an original concept by Imaitoonz and Production I.G, a screenplay by Takeichi Honda, and animation by Production I.G.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	DEAD LEAVES (デッドリーブス)
Release	Premiered at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival on November 4, 2003; Japanese theatrical release January 16, 2004 (Production I.G's Japanese page lists January 17)³^•¹^•⁴
Runtime	52 minutes per Shochiku and eiga.com; Production I.G's work list and AWN give 50 minutes¹^•²
Director	Hiroyuki Imaishi, also character design and animation direction; his first film as director²^•¹
Original concept	Imaitoonz and Production I.G; screenplay by Takeichi Honda²
Production and distribution	Animated by Production I.G; produced by Manga Entertainment and Production I.G; distributed by Shochiku²
Main voice cast	Kappei Yamaguchi as Retro, Takako Honda as Pandy⁵

Spoilers

Plot

In the near future, two naked people wake on wasteland at the edge of a city with no memories and no names. They seize food and weapons in a violent crime spree through a city whose inhabitants all share the same face, are captured by police after car chases and shootouts, and are sent to Dead Leaves, a prison built on the Moon that guards describe as inescapable.¹^•⁴ The two are named for their distinguishing features: Pandy has a red ring around one eye, and Retro has an old-fashioned television set for a head.⁷

The prison is a lethal place where guards are permitted to execute inmates to pass the time. Pandy and Retro organize the other prisoners and head for the exit, and their memories gradually return: eight years earlier the two had infiltrated Dead Leaves as secret investigators, looking into an illegal bioweapon called the Mam cell that the warden of the time was developing using human bodies. After a runaway accident, Pandy, who had won the warden's favor, had a Mam cell implanted in her eye and was sent back to Earth, where cold sleep erased her memory.¹

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia synopsis continues the story: the pair confront the warden Galactica, a cyborg and the daughter of the previous warden, who continues her father's work cloning prisoners into living weapons with a "mutation gene cluster" to sell on the black market. Galactica rips off Retro's head but is shot by Pandy's child as it is born; her death triggers an experiment that forms a giant caterpillar, which swallows the now-elderly child. Pandy and Retro escape the further-fragmented Moon and crash back to Earth, this time inside the city. The encyclopedia adds that it is unwise to ascribe too much sense to the plot: near the end Pandy wonders what they really were, spies, bad guys, clones, or something else, and agrees with Retro that it does not matter.⁷

Production

The film originated in a planning and original concept credit shared between Imaitoonz, the studio of graphic designer Toonz Imai, and Production I.G.² According to an Animation World Network report, Imaitoonz was a graphic designer whose style had appeared on MTV Japan logos, advertising art, T-shirts, arcade games, and magazine covers, and he and his associate Hiroyuki Imaishi created numerous grotesque character designs that the Production I.G staff developed into a youth-oriented film.³ Imaishi served as director, character designer, and animation director, and also drew storyboards.²^•⁶

The film was a co-production with Manga Entertainment, the UK-based company that also handled the English version, and was distributed theatrically in Japan by Shochiku.²^•⁷ It premiered at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival 2003 on November 4 before its general theatrical release.³

Music credits differ between sources: Shochiku's database, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes credit Yoshihiro Ike, while Production I.G's English work list credits Fusanobu Fujiyama as composer and IMDb separately lists Daisuke Asakura and "Fuji-Yama" as composers.¹^•²^•⁵^•⁸ AWN describes the soundtrack as electronica from Yoshihiro Ike, the composer of Blood: The Last Vampire.³

Style and reception

The film is built on relentless motion. Shochiku's database calls it a non-stop science-fiction action featurette set on a lunar prison,¹ and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia describes the animation as frenzied, vivid, and out of control, an extremely bloody and violent anime in such an unabashed cartoon style that only the most delicate sensibilities need fear being traumatized; it calls the film a diverting screwball journey into bad taste whose brevity means it finishes before it can weary.⁷ An Exclaim! review called it one of the most frenetic anime films released in the West, comparing it to an absurdly violent comic book flipped through at hyper-velocity, and judged that the plot, packed with enough visual ideas for hours of film, is resolved a little short in under an hour.⁹

AWN noted that the film's direction was new for Japan but resembled American works such as Jhonen Vasquez's Invader ZIM and the Spike and Mike's Sick & Twisted festivals, and suggested this was reasonable if Manga Entertainment requested it for the American teen video market, where the DVD was rated 17+.³ The Australian Classification Board rated the home-video release M (medium level violence, sexual references) on November 8, 2004.¹⁰

Availability

Production I.G's feature-film archive lists Dead Leaves alongside works such as Ghost in the Shell and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Animation Sequence).² The film remains available in North America: as of the most recent JustWatch check it streams on Plex Player and Tubi TV with ads, and can be bought or rented on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home, with a 52-minute runtime and an NR age rating.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Japanese anime features › Released 1999 to 2013

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026