Ranked #3432

Bavel no Hon

You know how they say by reading, the stories come alive? Bavel's Book makes that very literal.

In this anime short, a boy and his young sibling try to catch a bus that they end up missing anyway. They await another bus, and decide to sit at the stop. On the bench, they find a left-behind book, open it, and the worlds that exist on the page appear before their eyes. While to the viewer the images actually pop out of the book, it is highly metaphoric of a child's imagination at work. A tower may not have really grown out of the pages of Bavel's book--that's what happens when the children read and their minds go to work. They're transported into the book and go on strange adventures. Again, some great visual metaphor for the workings of a great imagination.

The art style is very unique. It doesn't have the eye candy appeal of most other anime. It has a more European look to it, and it is grainy, sketchy and uses darker tones in the colours. But it's not bad. It looks like something you would see in a creepy children's novel.

As for the sound, there are some pounding, intense piano pieces while the kids traverse through the novel and as they observe things from within the book. It does have a great sound. The lighter scenes have more exploration-themed pieces. Which suits the anime--the children are explorers, in a sense.

But the children are also not very complex characters. They just take what they see in the book, react, and nothing else happens. No great sense of inquiry from them, no growth, no real change comes about in the end. They are pretty passive characters, and you can argue that they're just kids, but there have been anime where the younger characters are more developed than even adults.

Bavel's Book is rather interesting and quirky. To turn the pages and the world on print becomes an actuality is a rather wonderful notion. It isn't long, the characters aren't developed, and it just could have been better in many other ways. It is, however, a good anime short, and worth a watch. read more