Buta

Young Animator Training Project/Anime Mirai short reviews: Part 5/12

Buta is a story about a lone samurai guy helping a kid find some lost treasure. Except the samurai is a pig. And the boy is a fox.

Yes, all the characters in Buta are anthropomorphised animals. Anthropomorphisation does have narrative purpose beyond trying to appeal to furries. Sometimes it’s about grafting these animal traits onto human characters to emphasise that characteristic. Sometimes it’s about distancing us from the reality of events so we’re able to take a step back from the reality and spend more time analyzing the symbolism which is the reason why Night on ... the Galactic Railroad decided to turn its brothers into cats.

In Buta, it doesn’t really serve any purpose. If anything, it cheapened its story because turning the characters into animals distanced me from them enough that I didn’t really care about them. At least, that’s my theory as to why I never got into Buta. It could have just been the story was boring. But I’m rather baffled as to why they decided to go the anthropomorphised animals route anyway, so I’m going to blame it on that.

Verdict: Skip

So this was a very short little movie about a sword for hire and his interesting adventure with a small Kitsune. The story is very simple, wealthy family gets attacked by pirates for an item they have and one of the children is taken away, only wanting to get the item back and get a little revenge for what had happened. Along the way, he hires a sword for hire to help him. The reason I didn’t start out with the sword for hire, Buta, was because the show doesn’t start out with him and yet both characters seem to take on the feeling of ... what a main character is supposed to be for different reasons.

Let’s talk about the main characters now I guess. First we have the little fox boy who is trying to get his map back from pirates. We never get an actual name for him; just that he is the oldest child of his family so will end up getting the map on his birthday. He is just like a normal child who was raised in a loving home; naïve, kind, and knows what is right from wrong. The second main character is Buta, the sword for hire. He is pretty much the exact opposite of the little fox. He is slightly dirty, worried more about surviving then doing the right thing, and is always looking for a way to make money. This doesn’t make him a bad guy though as the show has tried hard to show that. It just shows the difference between the privileged and the not so privileged without demonizing the two.

There is one group of characters that I sort of feel really did not need to be in the show, and that’s Guppi and her group. Guppi is a female thief who just didn’t seem to fit into the story at all. Her and her group just seemed to pop up every once in a while. I think there are only like three or four scenes with them and it’s just like they were there for comedy relief.

The animation is very beautiful; something I would be proud to put next to Studio Ghibli to compare though I do believe Buta was not made by hand. The colors are very bright during the happy points and pushed back slightly when they need to be in order to match the scene that it was trying to portray. The anthropomorphic creatures are very simple but it almost adds to the charm the movie was trying to portray as this is a movie supposed to be meant for all ages. The only problem I had with the design is that the dried fish did not look like dried fish. It’s a very small problem to me but the final part had it as a main point and I just couldn’t understand what they were doing till the fox said they were dried fish.

The Japanese voice acting was really nice to hear surprisingly. I don’t normally say that as it’s a little harsh on my ears being a non native speaker but this show’s tone was actually quite nice. The story was slow enough that I could read the subtitles fast enough without stopping the show and the voice acting had a nice tone that made it rather enjoyable.

Buta, a wealthy boy is separated from his family and is captured for his treasure. Through some silly occurrences, a samurai working with the pirates were forced to make a deal with the said kid to retrieve a treasure map.

Similar to Sword of the Stranger in terms of the relationship between boy and samurai fighting off against their fate but with Human like Animal Characters. Potential is there but for me there just isn't much to go on in terms of the overall message.

Seems mixed in theme but what can you do with just 24 minutes for a story like that. In terms ... of positives animation, sound, and design aesthetic is its strong points for sure. For that, so far the weakest of the 4 but by no means bad, but is cluttered which is not the story's fault but. As a whole, Was entertained for the animation but that is pretty much it, the substance is not something this has in terms of message or story.