No Littering

Alright, perhaps I just have a messed up sense of humour, but this was comedy gold. Not only does it have a good message (as the title says, NO LITTERING), but the sudden shift in tone and final scene absolutely sent me into a fit of laughter.

As for the animation, I feel like people don’t appreciate just how DIFFICULT it is to get claymation to look right, and this animator did a phenomenal job, especially since I assume this was done on little to no budget as a passion project or school assignment of sorts.

I do have to dock some points due to a lack ... of complex storyline, but overall, this is still a solid 7.5(rounded to 8)/10 in my book!

From the acclaimed director of Shitcom (the only anime I've given a 1 on MAL as I was actually appalled by it) comes No Littering, a clay-based anime PSA about...not littering.

Nagao Takena chooses to express this message by having a man and his girlfriend sitting on a park bench. Note that the man never blinks while his girlfriend blinks once. I'd want to believe this was some kind of symbolism/foreshadowing, but Takena isn't that clever.

Anyways, the man is throwing unidentified cans on the ground (maybe he's getting wasted to deal with the fact he's in a Nagao Takena anime) when Jason comes out of nowhere ... and stabs him in the eyes. The man's girlfriend runs away in horror, and Jason picks up the cans. The end.

I gave this a 5 because, unlike Shitcom, I didn't have any feelings of utter shock/disgust/disappointment in myself for watching it. I actually chuckled at the guy getting stabbed in the eyes since the clay gore was so ridiculous. The animation and music are bad/generic, but this is probably worth a watch once tbh. It's one minute long and possibly Takena's best work.

This is the second Nagao Takena work I have seen and going into No Littering I was expecting a terrible mess such as his previous work I have seen, Shitcom. However while No littering is by no means a good or even average program, it's definitely a step in the right direction. This ONA is better than Shitcom because it actually tries to convey a theme and had a moment where I was pretty entertained. Art is still pretty hideous, I don't think the claymation is done well at all. The story is bleh, but I would say it's better then Shitcom by a ... significant margin. The sound was pretty basic and wasn't that great either. The reason why the enjoyment level is that high is that I found how the particular theme was conveyed here was clever and funny. So overall while bad, No Littering is definitely an improvement from Shitcom.