Yoru no Hi

I first went into this expecting it to be the typical shounen anime, with an OP MC focusing more on tropes such as friendship instead of actual character development. I was disappointed to find that I was right. Despite the unusual art style, DO NOT BE FOOLED. Art is a good thing, but not all is as innocent as fans would have others believe. The movie focuses on the image of a moth, which according to my extensive research symbolizes unsettling things such as Shadows and Otherworldliness. Our overpowered main character (who we will refer to as "The Old Man") is slowly corrupted by the ... moth. Initially swatting it away, the man slowly succumbs to temptation, putting the moth to his face in ritualistic worship.

The Old Man begins the movie depicted as ghaustly and rotting. Upon seeing the devil-moth give his blessing on The Child (who is symbolic of the anti-Christ), The Old Man is filled with jealousy of The Child's fortune and youth. Desiring this upon himself, he grasps the moth and forces the ritual to happen. However, there cannot be two anti-Christs. The moth rejects him, flys away and burns up by a streetlamp.

However, DO NOT BE FOOLED by this intentional misdirection. Not only does this movie corrupt the minds of children and convince them to be full-blown Satanists, but this movie is Bourgeoisie propaganda. This movie is ACTUALLY designed to sell trading cards. So what if it's only four (The Moth, The Old Man, The Child, and The Woman)? Four will become eight will become sixteen will become thirty-two will become sixty-four will become one hundred twenty-eight will become two hundred fifty-six will become five hundred twelve will become one thousand twenty four will become two thousand forty eight will become four thousand ninety six will become eight thousand one hundred ninty two will become sixteen thousand three hundred eighty four trading cards.

No one will be able to remember all the names if that happens. Not to mention that The Old Man would be put on the banlist before the game even got released. What's the point in buying something that you can't even use?

Despite this, I may or may not recommend this anime.

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.

Rate a 4
English dubbed
Genre:art film
Special Note: The only reason this film is marked as english audio or dubbed in this case is because of background chatter of a couple seconds of radio. Aside from that there was no spoken words or subtitles.

Story/art
Unclear. Going from the art you see no color aside from black and white. Which one might dismiss to be an old film but they would be wrong. Instead the black and white concept was used in effort to produce a gloomy outlook. As for the art style it was mostly uncut drawings back to back. I say uncut because you can in a ... way see eraser marks. As to why that approach was chosen i am not sure. I am guessing it added a certain statement on constant changes. So, one could say with this information thus far that the story was a depressing tale but on what remains a mystery. My theory is that the message was masked emotions are found in infants. While we want to construct them in the best way we can we can't for what they want won't be clear until they have grown up. Or simply put the madness of the young-lings.

Sound
Clearly off tempo. Also, there were opportunities missed where sound could have been added such as the intro, the child, and the fireworks.

Overall: this film would be best appreciated if you liked films that plot were left unclear or unknown. Or if you are an art lover and would like to see a different type of artwork expression(style).