Yoru no Hi

Another Shiroki Saori oil painting on glass short, this one being the shortest available on MAL and perhaps the simplest. It's more of a vignette than a story—an interesting, even somewhat ordinary scene, portrayed with nightmarish aesthetics and atmosphere. This is like a ghastly horror film in sound and image, but nothing horrible happens. I suppose Saori just has a knack for darker moods. The technique is, again, beautiful, and the scene is strongly executed. The moth flying around, its shadow cast, reflected in the eyes, and the harsh light is all wonderful. The stark chiaroscuro of the scene and the minimal lighting render this ... highly textural, and more pristine. Other Saori shorts have a very visible streak effect when the characters move, but the low lighting masks these artifacts—for better or worse, yet I'd say it's for the better.

There's an old man, a baby, and a moth featured as the most prominent characters. And they're all really creepy. The baby looks dead (it's not), and I'm not even sure if the old man has eye balls. The actual events are irrelevant other than the moth landing or being placed over the eyes—the eye pattern of the moth becoming the eyes. There's some sense of wonder and awe, maybe even something spiritual (OR MKULTRA EXPERIMENTS PROJECT MONARCH OMG).

Probably the most interesting moment is when the moth lands on a lamp and it burns out, the scene fading to black—a nice way to end, but it also implies a greater significance to the moth and its touch.

When I went to watch this, what I got definitely wasn't what I was expecting. I'm surprised at how alright this is, I having expected something a lot... weirder.


It is definitely eerie, even maybe a a bit unsettling, but not in a scary sort of way; the scariest part about this being the style it was drawn in, but even that seems to just add to the short film's overall feeling.


All in all, I think this is a nice thing to watch once when you have a few minutes to kill, and don't mind storytelling that's voiceless. Though, don't expect the story to be clear ... cut and obvious, since it definitely will leave you wondering just what this was about.