Glass Animals take on a mythic teenage fight club

With pumping hip-hop tracks laid over ancient video techniques, director rubberband. has elevated old-school to appeal to the modern aesthetic in Tokyo Drifting for Glass Animals. 

Working with production company, Smuggler, to create a new-wave nostalgia brawl, the video follows an array of characters referentially indebted to 90’s fighter games. Stats pop up and special skills are shown, but just as quickly as each player-character is described, they’re knocked out by an absolutely jacked boss nobody can touch. When the boss finally goes down, the woman responsible pulls no punches to ensure the Minotaur is good and dead. 

The language of the film is steeped in techniques many might find outdated. There’s 16mm long exposure stop-animation, step printing, and layered VFX that gives a Thunderdome-meets-peak 90s MTV vibe. The design of the music video is influenced and derivative, but the final product is absolutely original and fun to watch, with details and 360 camera work that makes viewing a surprise and a pleasure.