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As Theodoor Steen has dispatched to Screen Anarchy from the 2025 Rotterdam International Film Festival, during the Q&A session following the World Premiere screening of Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions (2025), Toyoda insinuated that his eleventh feature film might be his last. Which—being the first film I’ve seen from Toyoda’s oeuvre—makes me feel a bit awkward as, unlike those more familiar with his output, I don’t know how Transcending Dimensions builds upon his past work. Regardless, I can only take Transcending Dimensions at face value and hope that future opportunity will allow me to go back and see Toyoda’s first ten.
As synopsized by the Fantasia International Film Festival (“Fantasia”), where Transcending Dimensions is having its Canadian premiere, “At the mountainous retreat of sinister, sadistic cult leader Master Hanzo (Chihara Jr.), a cluster of credulous souls have gathered for guidance towards spiritual enlightenment. Among them, however, is nihilistic hitman Shinno (Ryuhei Matsuda) and his client Nonoka (Haruka Imô), who holds Hanzo responsible for the disappearance of her boyfriend Rosuke (Yosuke Kubozuka). Despite Nonoka’s sudden and inexplicable suicide, Shinno elects to honor the contract, but that’s quickly revealed to be no simple task. A formidable sorcerer, Hanzo is only delighted by the challenge of his new adversary, and the true circumstances of ascetic seeker Rosuke are far more uncanny than one might imagine...”
It was the immediate contrast between the characterizations of Hanzo and Shinno that caught my attention; Hanzo being an over-the-top blonde-haired cult leader, both sinister and elusive, and Shinno being a near-inscrutable hitman, determined but restrained, intent on bringing Hanzo down. Apparently, this theme of cult leaders in conflict with criminals is an established theme of Toyoda’s, already popular in Japanese underground film culture, and an effective way to blend the genres of gangster crime narratives with fantasy sci-fi. This affords a satisfying measure of on-screen violence, diffused by head-scratching mystical and philosophical forays into the epistemological and spiritual underpinnings of existence, represented by a visually stunning Kubrick-like flight through outer space to the edges of the universe where a prismatic reflective setpiece captures a Lynchian weirdness pitched at just the right shade of strange. It’s all puzzling, beautiful, and compelling, with visual and scriptural iterations that layer over each other so that you never feel that you’re achieving an answer even as you are very much enjoying exploring the question.
Pondering the mysteries of the universe and not being able to arrive at any conclusion strikes me as fundamentally honest, however, and what’s real or not hardly matters when the goal is to transcend such categories.
As much a study of characters who are sharply-defined archetypes, or—as Chris Knipp writes in his review—"almost like chess pieces”, Transcending Dimensions is likewise an effective object study, profiling a Triton conch shell in all its rich mythic attribution. Triton shells, particularly those used as trumpets, hold significant symbolic meaning in various cultures and mythologies, associated with power and a connection between the divine and natural world. Ritually, they facilitate communication with the spirit world. The deep, resonant sound produced by blowing into a triton shell trumpet is believed to awaken the mind, enhance positive vibrations like hope and courage, and facilitate spiritual insights and communication with the divine. Both Hinduism and Buddhism associate the blowing of the conch shell with purifying the environment, dispelling negativity, and inviting good fortune. The spiral shape of the conch shell is often interpreted as a symbol of infinity and the cyclical nature of life. Its complex interior is seen as representing the inner self, encouraging self-reflection and spiritual growth. So it is the perfect object to presage the act of transcendence pursued in this film, particularly across dimensions.
