Tokyo Tails

Tokyo Tails constructs an imagined film noir universe set in Tokyo's criminal underworld, rendered as a series of paintings styled to resemble stills from an unmade film.

The narrative centres on Wizz, an Australian shepherd and former yakuza, whose return to the underworld propels the series forward. The cast is populated by anthropomorphic figures: the Osakats, a feline yakuza faction, and their canine rivals, whose conflicts serve as the structural and metaphorical backbone of the work. Obegi develops each character with enough specificity to sustain a genuinely novelistic world, one with its own loyalties, betrayals, and internal codes.

Formally, the series draws on Japanese film noir, manga aesthetics, and the visual grammar of Tokyo at night. Neon, shadow, and dense colour work together to evoke both the city's texture and the psychological weight of the story. The series also carries an elegiac undercurrent, paying tribute to beloved pets and drawing on Mizubayashi's writing on memory and attachment.

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