Ranked #2021

Ani*Kuri15

15 animation personalities of different anime studios are given 60 seconds to animate something and were compiled into this small movie called Ani (Animation) Kuri (creators) 15. These shorts were shown between commercials in NHK channel and it's other channels.

- The Hidden Princess /"Princess Onmitsu" (Mahiro Maeda: Gonzo) - 6.3
Regular animation here and a cute story based on anime most used themes. A little princess turns into a magical girl and defeats a power rangers like villains and the final boss with the help of her doll.

- "Gyrosopter" (Ranji Murata: Gonzo; and Tatsuya Yabuta: Gonzo) - 5.6
Yoy can feel Range Murata in it even though it was fully made in 3D. This doesn't had a story so to tell. It showed the so called Gyrosopter and a a girl looking at the water reminiscing about.

- Amusement Park Kiss /"Wandaba Kiss" (Atsushi Takeuchi: Production I.G) - 7.0
This one was pretty good, the animation well done and it was pretty effective, it was perfect for the movements required at a amusement park .

- Beyond the Tears (Akemi Hayashi: Gainax) - 6.8
This one was more like a music clip, showing a girl near a window crying and remembering perhaps a friend and happier days of the past.

- Project Mermaid (Mamoru Oshii: Production I.G) - .7.8
Oshi's done it again, whenever he does something short these days he goes into this direction. He presents us with a very modern approach of an animation even converging with real pictures of a woman to do the mermaid. It ends becoming a pretty good short movie. And the actual last two seconds of it, makes you want to learn more about that story.

- Frolicking /"Okkakekko"(Michael Arias: Studio 4°C) - 6.0
The most weird so far. We see a big green field with children happily playing on it, but then there appears this big robot like the Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky robot, walking around. A child stares at it without fear as the other children runs along with it.

- "Good Morning" (Satoshi Kon: Madhouse) - 9.0
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This one was an excellent piece from Mr. Satoshi Kon. It deals with the process of fully awaken in the morning.

- "Supaatsutaisa" ("刺客來搜山了"?) (Tobira Oda; and Yasuyuki Shimizu: Studio 4°C) - 8.4
This one is animated in basic sketch like black and white. Despite being so simple, it is a huge fun. It is shown to the viewer like it was some scenes or episode in the middle of a samurai story about this colonel that lives in the mountains with his pets but must leave everything behind because he's being targeted. It was a very funny short.

- A Gathering Of Cats ("Neko no Shuukai"?) (Makoto Shinkai: Comix Wave Film) - 8.3
Very good Shinkai short. It's about how a cat gets fed up about the humans always stepping on his tail and eventually does a "gathering of cats", where all the cats in the neighborhood assemple together and take revenge on humans. The next day, it happens all over again.
This was very different from what shinkai usually does, but not less good.

- Alien Invasion - Hiroshi's Circumstances /("Uchujin Raikou Hiroshi no Baai"?) (Shōjirō Nishimi: Studio 4°C) - 7.8
Very nice short, with a little robot distracting a guy on his desk when this one was calmly reading a manga, it looks like the little robot is playing with the guy. The character design here is like Mind game.

- Yurururu ~Daily Chapter~ "Yurururu ~Nichijou Hen~" (Kazuto Nakazawa: Studio 4°C) - 8.0
A guy is trying to animate a scene in it, and you actually see the drawing being born and process of it. You also see the guy, well not see but it's more like in first person animation. see the guy also going to the bathroom and in the return trying to play a joke on a co-worker by messing with the keyboard that the co-worker was typing (I found that scene hilarious, because I usually did the exact thing too). In the end you see the animation complete.
Interesting point is that he has the drawing upside down.

- Project Omega (Shōji Kawamori: Satelight) - 7.9
It's Kawamorui time so you can expect mecha here, even if it's a one minute mecha anime. A comet is about to collide with earth, and when the announcer of NHK news announces that the colliding point will be NHK there are measures to be taken. The whole building of NHK transforms into a huge mecha to stop the comet, the problem is that it needs more power.

- Heat Man ("Hyotoko"?) (Yasufumi Soejima: Gonzo) - 4.0
Another total CG piece here.
A group of Native attacks a beast, or whatever it is. total CG in Gonzo vein, the worst of the bunch.

- Attack of The Azuma Area #2 (Shinji Kimura: Studio 4°C) - 7.0
CGI animation again but done differently. This one was fun. Three little alienes arrive on earth to conquer it, when they approach someones house speaking of their plans of conquer throught he intercumunicator, the person on the other side just tells them that she doesn't need it, confusing them by some seller.

- Sancha Blues (The Aromatic Tea) Blues" (Osamu Kobayashi: Madhouse) - 8.0
An record store owner watches their supposed clients coming to his store but most of them don't buy anything for the store owner sadness.

Some directors were able to accomplish their tale or their message in it's 1 minute story, but some weren't able to do it, afterall, it's pretty difficult to come up with a finished product in only one minute.

It was a great watch never the less.

Rate: 8.0/10 very good stuff. read more

You've most likely already read the description which does a good job at telling you what Ani*Kuri15 is, so I won't waste any time with that. What I'm going to focus on is, the 60 seconds worlds made by the animation creators... how did I enjoy those sixty seconds?

The Secret Princess - by Maeda Mahiro

A colourful and fast-paced clip about a girl with a double identity as Princess Tama and her magical girl counterpart, princess Onmitsu and her side-kick doll Chigomaru. Of course, you get all this information between the few lines the characters throw at each other because it is in essence a one minute long string of action sequences. My favourite moments from it were the scene that takes a jab at a certain dueling tactic - a tactic a certain pink haired prince falls for in episode eleven of a certain series - and Chigomaru's transformation scene, which breaks the 4th wall and explains something that every person who has watched a mahou shoujo series at some point has wondered about. [7]

Gyrosopter - by Murata Range and Yabuta Tatsuya

An example of how not to use computer graphics. They went for a somewhat realistic looking (the pilot's face still has an anime aesthetic) full CG clip, which by today's standards looks like crap... not that it looked any better before, because it looks a lot worse than older CG films or animated cutscenes from video games. "Gyrosepter" is poorly rendered and looks quite amateurish. Were they even trying? [3]

Wanderpark Kiss - by Takeuchi Atsushi

Unlike the previous clip, this one makes clever use of cell-shaded CG that looks like it was drawn with colored pencils, in a cute animation about a boy trying to kiss a girl. The film's idea and execution are pretty simple but clever - it shows how people sometimes tend to overcomplicate things. Saying a lot more than that would be spoiling this short experience. [8]

The Other Side of Tears by Hayashi Akemi

This clip looks the most like an average TV anime series, and is pretty much a music video for a cliche song about moving on after a break-up. Not that much else to say, it has a pretty bland look and I didn't really like the song. [5]

PROJECT_MERMAID by Oshii Mamoru

This is more or less, a one minute version of "The Little Mermaid" or at least a reference to it. I liked the shifting collage animation of the mermaid but the backgrounds weren't that interesting. Their visual style reminded me a lot of how surfing the web is portrayed in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Oshii's film, Innocence. I didn't really like those scenes there, and I didn't like this design choice here that much either. [6]

Frolicking by Michael Arias

Pretty much what the title says, children playing around with a giant robot on a green field. It has really nice animation - oh, and this short also nicely blends CG and "hand drawn" animation - and music which helps to lure you into the film's warmhearted mood... but, there's a hint that there's more going on. I would've liked if this clip was expanded on into a longer original animation or even a feature film. Imagining the why's, what's and where's is fine too though. [8]

Good Morning by Kon Satoshi

The routine of waking up and getting ready for the day ahead... after a birthday party the day before. Another very simple concept that is quite well executed. The animation was pretty good, but as far as technical details go, the highlights of this clip are the very detailed backgrounds and camera positions and angles. It really feels like someone is using that space. This is one of the best (if not the best) short films of the bunch, and is pretty self-contained. A really good use of sixty seconds. [9]

Sports Colonel. Episode 18 - The Assassin Comes to Hunt in the Mountains by Oda Tobira and Shimizu Yasuyuki

A plainly animated short about a colonel who is friends with a lot of wild animals and goes through many loosely related events that are examples of classic comic gags. There's a lot going on (its narrative is pretty much like a run-on sentence, heh) and it references a manga by Oda Tobira which I'm not familiar with, but the clip was pretty funny. [7]

A Gathering of Cats by Shinkai Makoto

"But if enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule. [...] Little one, I would like to see anyone -- prophet, king or God -- persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time."

This clip reminded me of "Dream of a Thousand Cats" from the Sandman comic by Neil Gaiman. Actually, it follows pretty much the same idea and I wouldn't be surprised if Shinkai was inspired (at least in part) by this. Anyway, the animation style should be familiar to anyone who has seen any of Shinkai's works before and the clip was pretty good. [7]

Alien Invasion - Hiroshi's Case by Nishimi Shoujirou

A pretty stupid situation (in a good way) where a tiny extraterrestrial drone messes up with Hiroshi - who is reading a manga - to create an opportunity to escape from his room. It has the same wacky animation style as Tekkon Kinkreet (and other Studio 4°C works) and the entire video is "shot" pretty much from the same angle, which I liked. [8]

Yurururu ~Daily Chapter~ by Nakazawa Kazuto

A sixty seconds clip that follows an animator as he is animating one second from some film. Just like the previous short, it has a visual style that is pretty different than your usual anime. Uh, yes. It was cool and funny. The end. [7]

Project Omega by Kawamori Shouji

Super Robot Mech fights Energy Meteorite... a humorous take on various mecha shows that was so-so. I'm not much of a mecha fan (especially, not of the super robot kind) so part of the appeal of this clip was lost to me, I guess. [6]

Blaze Man by Soejima Yasufumi

A lot of pretty ugly CG, animating shamans and spear-wielding warriors fighting a giant bear. To add to that displeasure, every scene transition is too fast and there is way too much camera movement which makes this pretty disorienting visually. I didn't like it. [4]

Attack of Higashimachi 2nd Borough by Kimura Shinji

"Due to the lack of money, we shall now broadcast simpler images." And suddenly, the movie looks a lot better, and it has a visual style that is more appropriate for the contents of the clip. It's about three aliens land on earth to announce their invasion, but things don't go according to plan... [7]

Sancha Blues by Kobayashi Osamu

Various potential customers enter a record-store and look for something they'd like to buy... and the store owner watches them interact and dreams about the cash. Ignoring the visual style which doesn't aim for realism at all, this was a pretty natural portrayal of the day to day atmosphere one might find in a record-store. [8]
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