Ranked #1523

Robot Carnival

While simply a series of short films, Robot Carnival really is artisic creativity unbound. Each story in and of itself is an exploration into the various aspects of artifical life forms and various implications thereof. As written by Justin Sevrakis on ANN "The show's credits reads like a whose-who of anime"- and it truly does. I cannot recommend this enough for mecha fans and really anyone who enjoys seeing artists doing what they do best.

A collection of short films made around the theme of "robots". The theme is not the only thing these clips share however. They all seem to be defined by very good animation but uninspired or downright bad directing. Another thing they have in common is the bad sound quality - cheap effects, very poor synchronization with the video and either a complete lack of or terrible voice acting. None of the clips seem to be that good or consistent in what they're trying to portray and range from very ambitious shorts that simply fall flat because the execution does not match that ambition, or clips where the creators weren't even trying, doing this more because they were asked to than because they had any interest in animating anything. The intro/opening and ending/epilogue clips for the collection are the best ones - minus the "Nightmare" short maybe -... perhaps unsurprisingly since they were co-directed by Otomo Katsuhiro...

Franken's Gear

The opening clip was pretty cool so I was hoping for more stuff on the same level going into the shorts. The first clip started pretty well I think. It has detailed and fluid animation and a visual style that I liked... of course, everything else about it is lacking and it went downhill pretty fast. For one, the clip is just too long. I've seen enough references, homages and adaptations of Mary Shelley's novel that the thing just isn't interesting anymore. Especially since it does not stray from the typical fare, it doesn't try to do anything new to the theme. It made for a very boring watch. That wasn't helped by the very lacking sound quality. A very bad soundtrack, bland sound effects that aren't always in synch with what happens on the screen and no voice acting whatsoever. The lack of voices isn't bad per se, what's bad is that Victor Frankenstein is mute because they didn't bother to hire a seiyuu. Looking at the clips that do have voice acting in them... I think I kind of understand their reasoning though. Still, this is one of the decent clips.

Deprive

I don't know what I should make of this one to be honest. Considering some moments from the clip, I think it qualifies as a really bad music video for some equally bad or worse songs. Just like in the first clip there's no voice acting - and honestly, I was glad there was none - so what drives the short forward is the visual experience alone. It's a really cheesy short, it portrays the love story between a cyborg and some hot chick. It comes with the whole package - abductions, fights, explosions and of course a corny encounter with the Big Bad. The animation quality is decent for that time but unlike the opening clip and "Franken's Gear", with the exception of the somewhat detailed backgrounds, it didn't really age that well. You're only going to like it if you have a thing for 1980s animation. Of course, the soundtrack is even worse, filled with all those sound effects the more mediocre artists from the same decade liked to use in their shitty songs.

Presence

Was I surprised by this short. It started pretty well - a fixed camera observing daily street life in some retro sci-fi city. That was pretty interesting. And it has dialogue too, and it's not half bad... well, at first. The main problem with this short is that they tried to squeeze a feature film into twenty minutes. It set itself some pretty lofty goals that are pretty difficult to reach in such a short time... The short tries to be sophisticated, philosophical. It tries to treat some complex themes like free will, love and whatever... it doesn't want to be just some empty narrative. But it fails. Spectacularly. The dialogue is incredibly stupid and shoehorned in. Because it's only ten minutes shorter than half an hour the scenes simply don't flow well into one another and the way characters act seems random and sudden. The animation quality is pretty good but the characters move in weird ways... I don't know what kind of skeletal system these people are supposed to have because their motion is very unnatural - it reminded me a little of how characters move in films that use clay animation. That may be okay there. Here it's out of place. As for the voice acting, it doesn't do much to soften the very lacking dialogue because the voice actors are pretty bad at doing their thing. The soundtrack wasn't bad at all, but an animated short can't survive on music alone.

Starlight Angel

Teenage love, such a complicated thing. Every sixteen year old girl needs a robot knight in shining armor right? Whatever. I don't see how this clip is related in any way with or how robots were even necessary. They just jammed them in there to fit the theme of the anthology. The animation is pretty good, even the music isn't that bad but... if they bothered to have the crowds speak (or at least use some stock crowd noise) why are the protagonists mute? It's an inconsistency. Why would other people in the amusement park - the clip's setting - be able to talk and yet the protagonists voice no words? Especially since they're supposed to say stuff... their mouths move. This and the fact that as I said, the clip's content is nothing special didn't really help me enjoy it.

Cloud

Pretty much the exception to the trend, but not necessarily in a good way. The short features very limited animation that consists mostly of panning the camera over pencil sketches. I didn't find this choice of animation too bad though. The soundtrack for the clip was pretty good too and set the mood for the short. It's about some robot who remembers or imagines various events from humanity's history while walking. From ancient times until now, with various more important events illustrated (like for example, the atomic bomb). It's too long for its own good though, the entire theme could have been treated in about two minutes using the same style. And even if the idea was pretty interesting, its delivery isn't that good - the thing that makes this clip special after all, is the fact that it's so different from the others in the collection... and that's not much.

A Tale of Two Robots / A strange tale of Meiji Era Machines

Giant robot fights. With a twist? - this is a mecha show set in 19th century Japan. As with the others, the animation is very good. The soundwork is pretty good too but the background music just doesn't belong in the clip and I found it annoying at times. I would describe the voice acting as ranging from decent to bad, to really bad. The evil foreign professor who invades Japan in his giant machine stood out in particular with the terrible job his actor did. Not that he had a lot to work from, the lines he spews are either cliche bad guy catchphrases or weird monologue. There's a lot of slapstick comedy in the short but I didn't laugh much at those scenes. I didn't laugh at all actually. Like the rest of the clips, this short is just a package filled with trite content and cliches.

Nightmare

I must sound like a broken record by now but... this clip is yet another example of great animation ruined by horrible sound and a bland narrative. A future city is falling apart, destroyed by various robots and machines... and we follow one man as he tries to escape from this nightmare. I liked this clip the most but I have to say that apart from the animation (some scenes are really well animated, like the crowd scene from the clip's opening, which I believe was rotoscoped), it's not that good at all. I didn't like the soundtrack and of course, just like in "Starlight Angel", the only time people seem to be able to talk is when they are in crowds...

All in all, "Robot Carnival" is an anthology of animated shorts that simply did not age well at all. read more