Spotlight Anime: Pale Cocoon MAL Anime Information Page: Pale Cocoon MAL Score – 7.86 (by 10880 users) Ranked - #580 Popularity - #573 Original Spotlight Thread: Pale Cocoon For the next two weeks I would like to have a discussion about the anime that focuses on the key elements that we here on MAL use to critically rate an anime: Animation, Sound, Characters, Story, and Enjoyment. I would like everyone to approach this thread as if you were going to write a review and structure your initial post like this: Animation - insert rating Sound - insert rating Characters - insert rating Story - insert rating Enjoyment - insert rating Animation - discuss any pros and cons of the animation styling used in the series, try to include some specifics. Sound - describe any of the things you liked or didn't care for in regards to the music and sound effects used in the series etc... If you are having trouble writing up a review or coming up with specific pros and cons, please don't worry. Just do the best you can with it and if you can only write two or three sentences about any of the 5 elements then that's OK. Not everyone here is currently at a level which will allow them to articulate their thoughts and opinions. After your initial post is made you can feel free to civilly discuss issues of contention. I am sure there will be many opinions expressed here that some of us will disagree upon and criticise and it is for that reason that this entire club exists. So I hope everyone has fun and I am really looking forward to watching this discussion unfold. RESULTS OF THE RESURRECTION POLL Pale Cocoon was PERMANENTLY barred from induction into the club Anime list: 22 Yes - 47.8% 24 No - 52.1% 19 Don't know this anime - 27.9% of the total number polled 3 Abstained - 3.8% of the total number polled |
santetjanNov 30, 2011 10:10 AM
| You do not beg the sun for mercy. |
| Literally all I remember about this is the visuals. That's not a good sign. |
| Given that my outlook towards life has been heavily influenced by Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, it's no surprise that Pale Cocoon also struck a chord in me. It presents to its viewers a situation and a question that should be relevant to any person of any era. What can one do, given a past full of regrets, a bleak present, and an uncertain future? Hope. Hope that the past was not for naught, that there is significance in one's current existence, that tomorrow will be a brighter day. I found everything in the OAV masterfully crafted to emphasize this point: archeology, memories, the salvaging of fragmented images and records, stories of the past, yearning for things lost, leaving messages for people of future generations, the history of a pair of lovers as well as that of all mankind. And all that in less than 25 minutes. My post in the previous spotlight: |
YuunagiNov 11, 2011 9:22 AM
| So far, Pale Cocoon has really been the only short anime that did everything perfectly while knowing it was no more than 25 min.Even if it's not everyone's cup of tea, that is a pretty good reason to induct it, and better than, let's say, La maison en petits cubes. But I'm not here to compare anime. Really, I think Yuunagi as said a lot of what I think, so I'll leave it like that. |
| -Fixing- |
| I really enjoyed this. Nice visuals, intriguing storyline. It was just too damn short. Eve no Jikan has the same feel (perhaps unsurprising with the same director) and does much of the same things in a better way, though, and it's already on the list. So... idk. I might vote yes depending on my mood but could go no, instead. /unhelpful |
Yuunagi said: What can one do, given a past full of regrets, a bleak present, and an uncertain future? Hope. Hope that the past was not for naught, that there is significance in one's current existence, that tomorrow will be a brighter day. Simply Beautiful. I will add that the all encompassing darkness certainly made a great stage and visual example of how the author payed great attention to lighting and how it could be used to set a very ominous mood, only to strip the darkness of it's bleakness with shards of shimmering light and our beautifully bright blue planet. In this case 'hope' was actually realized in that one moment we see earth. I thought this short movie was breath taking. I suppose my only actual criticism would be in line with Yamakasi. I wish that the story could have been developed into a longer movie. If i were to dig a little more for criticism then I'd probably also notice that dystopian plots have been done to death. In the case of Pale Cocoon I think it did some justice to it's BLAME! like setting. Of course other live action movies have created similar effects using darkness and light, a few that come immediately to mind are Blade Runner and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I suppose these really aren't criticisms at all though. Easily voting yes for Pale Cocoon. |
Orion1Nov 15, 2011 2:57 AM
| I have a tendency to skim through spotlights and I would say yuunagi said: What can one do, given a past full of regrets, a bleak present, and an uncertain future? Hope. Hope that the past was not for naught, that there is significance in one's current existence, that tomorrow will be a brighter day. Darn it, I'm so going to watch this now. |
| Well, since I actually wrote a review already, I hope you don't mind if I copy it in here. Also, pardon my combative tone, I originally posted this in a sea of fawning fanatics where it was called for! After all, isn't it nice to lower people's expectations when you don't think a show's all that? WIthout further ado, please enjoy my punchy review! (apologies for the horrible rhyme) Animation 8 Sound 8 Character 6 Story 5 Enjoyment 5 Overall 6 I understand that “OMG, this anime is so deep!” Really, I do! I understand that it has a compelling narrative that asks us to ponder slightly more philosophical questions than usual, like what the value of the past is, for example, and what makes it worth revisiting. Our protagonist doesn't know why he enjoys researching the past, but at one point he suspects that it helps him to avoid reality. One fellow archaeologist thinks it's too painful to see what humankind had lost, and to witness the course of human stupidity, thus ends up quitting. Hmm, our new and talented director is yet another pessimist come from university? Surprise, surprise. I think my synopsis says it all, she can't bear to watch the course of “human stupidity.” It is another smug liberal, bent on thinking that humankind is doomed to failure and that the environment will strike back on our weak and pathetic species. If only mankind had paid attention to what these college-bred liberals were saying, if only we'd changed our arrogant ways and accepted the obvious truth, then we might have been saved. You might think you are picking up a bit of resentment here, damn right you are! I am sick of all this doom and gloom crap, and enviro-fatalism is just one other strain of academic sickness that the world has thankfully proven itself immune to. As long as books have been sold and positions hired on fatalism, so has the human legacy proven resistant to any foretold demolition. Surprise, we don't live underground yet. In 15 years, the cocksure college-bred cynics will be once again shown up by the tenacity of the human spirit, we will still live where we please (though probably still on earth), and a new generation of doom will replace the enviro-fatalists, who replaced the nuclear-fatalists, who replaced the totalitarian-fatalists, and so on. Besides the oh so deep setting though, stands a well crafted story that effectively makes use of the 25 minutes given to it. It skims a philosophical issue in the midst of feeling sorry for mankind and propagating a dingy atmosphere, effectively using music and art to make this atmosphere. What this OVA reminded me a lot of is Voices of a Distant Star. Suffice to say our director and writer Yoshiura Yasuhiro has followed in Shinkai Makoto's footsteps in taking on the majority of the duties himself, throwing himself heart and soul into a low-budget melancholic vignette lacking true depth but desperately clinging onto a veneer of profundity. Thanks to very good music and artwork, this approach is surprisingly effective, and I personally would rate it above Voices. The 2D and 3D animation is not quite as good as some of the reviewers think. The best blend of 2D and 3D I've ever seen is the new evangelion, and this doesn't compare at all. It is quite an erratic camera, not really helping the atmosphere, just zooming around like a toy in the hands of a kindergartner. The 2D vs the 3D is a bit unintentionally jarring, and the 3D really does come across like playing with software, not like serious filmwork. Maybe it just needed more budget, just like most OVAs that dabble in this third dimension. |
| “Money can't buy dere” |
| The existence of history as an academic discipline has often been questioned: what actual use is there for the results of research into history? Could the money not better be spent on disciplines like physics or medicine? Heck, is it even possible to properly 'do research' history in the first place? The field has tried for a while to counter such claims, coming up with feeble excuses like 'not repeating the mistakes of the past', which is a truism when applied to any individual detail and simple bollocks when applied to a grand scale (as far too many individual details would have to be repeated before the example from 'the past' become relevant again). No, the only real reason given for the study of history is 'because people just find it important to know the past'. Even if the actual study of history - investigating sources instead of blindly copying them - is in itself a relatively new idea and even if the notion of preserving our heritage would be inconceivable (or at the least a waste of time and energy) to most of our ancestors, people have always wanted to know where we came from. This, as I see it, is what Pale Cocoon is about: an unrelenting desire to get to know a world that is gone, a world different from the one currently inhabited. And it is an anime talking about different attitudes towards this past: one can dig it up, one can cling to it even in a changing world (with predictable negative results) and one can let it go because it has become irrelevant. As has been quite clearly noted, there is a hint of an environmentalist message, but to be honest, I really don't think it's that important to the show: the end of the Earth as we know it is stated as a simple matter of fact, a piece of history - and something that is actually forgotten by the population at large. What is important here is that it provides contrast: we have a 'green' Earth, a 'rust red' Earth (though that one is never shown, mind!) and the sci-fi environment of the titular cocoon. There is a very clear difference of aesthetics between the offices in the cocoon shown and the pictures of the past hanging on the 'wall' of the main's office, which difference showcases exactly what it is the historian is interested in and is hoping to reconstruct, be it for the eyes of others or only for his own, but that is not to say that one aesthetic is portrayed as being 'better' than the other: the photographs, though colourful, are a bit of an eclectic bunch and serve simply as pictures of the past, not as providing some overarching aesthetic that is worth pursuing in the here and now, whereas the present shown is, to my eyes, perhaps a bit sterile, as office environments tend to be, but certainly not 'bleak', to use Yuunagi's word. In fact, I also cannot find any of the 'doom and gloom' Seabury speaks of. There are some varying perspectives, some of which negative, on the use of studying the past, but that is not any different from how the world is today, and the very last shot actually shows that things have a tendency to straighten themselves out over time when they go bad. There is, then, not really any story or message or morale to speak of here. When looking solely at what is shown, what Pale Cocoon presents is nothing but a single man's passion for getting to see a world that is not his own. And whereas this world at first is that of the past, unobtainable in any real sense, the climax of the twenty-something minutes is rather jubilant, as it shows that there is an actual, still existing world out there for this man to look at, ponder over and study. The above of course in no way answers the question of whether Pale Cocoon is worth inducting. There isn't much of a story and the characters are reduced to their positions on the worth of their research. The animation is certainly serviceable, the design, even though not highly original, is the highlight of the show and the music wants too strongly to be evocative and moving. And much more can't be said about it, as the fact is that an OVA of not even half an hour in length does not lend itself to any more profound analysis - unless you want to jump into the quagmire of interpretation. To be honest, while I myself think there is enough there that is unique and recommendable, I can see why others would think otherwise. |
| You do not beg the sun for mercy. |
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