Republishing this. A lot of goodness can be packed into a short anime.
Feeling stressed due to a tight schedule? No more time in your life for the things you love? You’re in luck! Here is a selection of excellent anime short enough to fit into the tightest schedule.
There is no sacrifice in quality here. Anime that is short is anime that has been boiled down to the essence of what a story is. And because it is short, a lot of effort per minute of run time has to be put into it to grab your attention. That level of effort would be extremely difficult to sustain for a movie or a standard series. The downside is that you rarely catch them on Crunchyroll and other major sites. I would not be surprised if some of them never got attention beyond whatever anime festival they were produced for.
But then, there is another upside in that you aren’t constrained by what is considered marketable. You are free to let your mind go wandering where it would go. (Brownie points if you know where that came from without Googling it.)
Warning: Some of these may have you weeping in record time!
Shelter by Porter Robinson & Madeon (Crunchyroll and A1 Pictures)
Rin lives in a computer simulation. She spends her days creating fantasy worlds to live in. Memories of her past keep her from giving up from loneliness. But why?
Ohayo (オハヨウ) by Satoshi Kon
Have you ever awakened only to feel like you are not quite all there?
Dareka no Manizashi by Makoto Shinkai
The love of a father for his daughter never dies, even when she is all grown up and no longer has time for him. Shinkai again shows his genius.
Obake Chan
A little girl in training to be a ghost.
Control Bear directed by Yojiro Arai
A lot can happen in a couple minutes of a girl’s imagination.
And now for something completely different!
Ladies and gentlemen, the next two are music videos feat. Daoko, an incredible Japanese vocalist. They are definitely NSFW. I also strongly suggest you not take any acid before watching them. (But if you do, do it in a dark room close to a large screen TV and just let it flow.
It just seems so natural that anime and music videos would go together like chocolate and peanut butter or sex and love. I do not understand why I’d never thought of it until I stumbled onto the Japan Animators Exhibition website.
Girl – Hibiki Yoshizaki and Shuichi Iseki – lyrics
Interesting take on a Magical Girl and loneliness. The colors are so eye-popping and the art is so perfect! Full of all kinds of Freudian symbolism on top of the uninhibited graphics.
ME!ME!ME! – Hibiki Yoshizaki and Shuichi Iseki – lyrics
Being an otaku can be rough, especially when it leads you to live completely in the fantasy and abandon real life.
There are a lot of anime shorts out there. Some are easy to find and some are buried deep within Vimeo. Anime series with very short episodes are easier to find. I covered one of them earlier, Encouragement of Climb (Yama no Susume).
Anime shorts are like short stories or even poetry, they have to captivate you very quickly or they have failed. They have to include everything they need to accomplish their objective in a very short space. That intensity makes good shorts well worth the effort.
And remember that the Google search engine is your friend.
Leave a Reply