The balance between irreverence, moral themes, and aesthetics stands on the head of a pin. There are definitely some hard to stomach scenes and dialogue in Heavy Traffic, though it all leads to a grimy portrait of an underground community at a specific time and place. There is some cohesion in the chaos, and inevitably people fall into the trough of the proverbial pinball machine.

This is a great animated movie for adult audiences only. The live action scenes are weak but luckily there are only two of those and they are fairly brief. Try to come in to this one with an open mind, man.