Furiko

Furiko (Pendulum) is a rather pleasant gem. It's an anime short that manages to capture and invoke emotions in its viewers that's sometimes unattainable by the likes of 20 minute episode series. Where many fail it succeeded with elegance and modesty.

It immerses you into the lives of a couple in an authentic way. It doesn't force itself upon the viewer but gently glides into focus. And with its simplistic flip-book inspired visuals and accompanying somber musical backing, it's able to tell a coherent story that's woven together beautifully.
This is a short tale that leaves an awe inspiring message to any viewer invested into ... it, no matter your background or demographic. It shows the bittersweet flow of time through the guise of a swinging pendulum. Striped of any unnecessary elements it gives us a quick glimpse into someone's fleeting life and the unwavering truth about everyone's final outcome in the most honest form.

With a run time of only 3mins this is surely something worthy of your time. It's short, potent and something that can lead to a cathartic moment upon completion. Its beauty comes from its simplicity. A must watch for anyone.

It's unfortunate that so many brilliant animated shorts in Japan are largely obscure to western audiences. It's also unexpected that a Japanese comedian, going by the pseudonym "Tekken", was able to capture the hearts of millions with two short, dialogue-less, and crudely drawn animations. The following covers the first of the two, entitled "Furiko" (otherwise known as Pendulum).

You don't need words to tell a beautiful story. It's such a rare thing to see in recent anime, but Takefumi Kurashina takes the medium and strips it to its rawest form - basic animation, simple music, and an uncomplicated plot. Telling the story of a man's journey ... through life and love, the narrative is done beautifully and flows effortlessly, and is an entirely silent affair. That being said, Furiko plays on its simplicity with great success, with the emotions of its characters pulling through in every fleeting scene. The narrative is pushed along with the frame being captured in a swinging pendulum, only stopping when the man pauses to realize the beauty in his life. Like a swinging pendulum, life moves on, and these realizations are far and in between life's tragically brief existence.

The music accompanying the man's story is perfect. It's a vague statement, but one that isn't really given out lightly. The lyric-less song begins with four piano chords, which repeat themselves throughout the entirety of the story. With the repetition of these chords matching up with the incessant swinging of the "pendulum", violin melodies are added as the story progresses, similar to Pachelbel's Canon in D. Like the story, the melody's buildup has a beginning, a climax, and an end, bringing everything back to the same four chords used at the beginning of the piece. Ashes to ashes, so to speak. It very much reflects the whole aspect of life as a journey, marked at the beginning and end with life and death.

I'm not a big fan of the word "tearjerker", but in Furiko's case, tearjerker is most definitely an understatement. In three, short minutes, Furiko accomplishes to do what dozens of long-running episodes might not - emotionally captivate you with simplicity, subtlety, and an endearing story.

Pendulum not trying to embellish reality, she is represented as. This beautiful and sad animated flip-book is like a drama, all the emotions spend.
Also very tragic. One can easily immerse in the context.

This animation is authentic, it shows Japan as!
The portrait of so many families in Japan ... Life for a Japanese man is his work, always staying out late, drinking Friday night etc.. As a result, the family passes behind, no time for us and without he realizes, he finds himself in retirement.
When he realizes all this, it's too late ... He tries to stop the clock, it symbolically shows that he wants to ... stop time, but again, it's too late ...
The implicit message that the author wants us to understand is that: time flies, you should take advantage and pick up his life before it was damaged and washed away by time.
Touching.

This isn't something long so I will make a short and sweet review.

Story - 6
Art - 8
Sound - 8
Character - 6
Enjoyment - 6
Overall - 6.8 (7)

Tekken's Furiko/Pendulum is a rather manipulative, but sweet short story of a delinquent man and soft woman, as they grow together whilst time passes. It has everything a sob story needs to work. A sweet relationship, melodrama, family issues. It's got the entire formula. Despite this unoriginality, it still presents itself successfully, in that, its cheerful to sorrowful fall is still worth the while to watch.
...
The audiovisuals are interesting, with watching this, there is a noticeable theme presented with the pendulum in itself. The pendulum acts as a camera for most of the duration of the story with the pendulum bob being the screen that physically shows the story. This was quite a nice idea on Tekken's behalf for a story about time, it truly does show that time always keeps moving, even when are at the highest in life, to the most dreadful. The actual visuals were made up from what looked like a whiteboard marker, with grey shades underneath. Quite a basic set to create from, but with a simple story, comes a simple structure. The sound, if I am not wrong, was piano chords with what sounded like a string instrument to pair with it. Consequently producing a sound that was fitting for growing with time.

For enjoyment, due to its manipulate nature, I couldn't see why I would give this anything 7 or over, though, its clever presentation made for it to be a better watch.

If you have 4 and a half minutes to spare, I would recommend this, although, it isn't anything special since stories like these are rather common even for when it was released back in 2012.

You see that, right? It is your life through the eyes of a man, it is the life that happens without realizing, leaving us wounds entwined between moments of happiness that we pass by.

This short reveals how time brings us surprises, good and bad, there are always of them. He also shows us how a man who most of his life is angry, because he feels frustrated, not having the life he had and can lose the only joy left, which was always there waiting for him at the door. Touching many times, if you were there, seeing the signals, as those moments will ... not be repeated.

This short teaches us to value our existence, our life, knowing that we write our own history, is not destiny, we put restrictions, a barrier that blinds us to the truth that is closed to our stubbornness. We must realize before, not to regret later. Thats life, thats Furiko or Pendulum, a tickking of human emotions, so natural, to know how little is left to live.
And want repeat it again.

Thank you for reading.

In many instances in the anime medium, different short works with low budget go unnoticed which is and a damn shame because many of them are good with some better than others. *cough shitcom.

Furiko also known as pendulum is an anime short that details the lives of a couple and how there relationship develops and gets strained in the windy road of love. I don't want to spoil anything but even though the animation isn't that impressive, the style kills it and the melancholy music in the background is top notch.

If you want a short and bittersweet anime ... check this out.

The first thing that came to mind when I watched it was the beginning scene of Disney's Up. Similar to Up, Furiko takes us on a quick and enjoyable albeit clichéd journey of two people falling in love. The story of Furiko could probably fit into a dozen animes/ mangas, which may result in some disliking it because it brings nothing new to the table, but I still found it enjoyable. Probably because I'm a sucker for stories such as this. Anyway, the story proceeds as such: bad boy saves model student from other bad boys and she falls in love with him. He ... gets annoyed at first but eventually gives in and changes himself for her. They grow up, encounter their share of monetary issues, they power through but in the end she gets a terminal illness. I knew it was coming, but it still made me feel sad nonetheless, especially when he tried to slow down time.

Short films in recent years have had an emphasis on animation, so it is a nice change when it comes to Furiko's hand drawn animations, with further emphasis placed onto the animation and story. The animation and drawings incite a sense of nostalgia, because it is very similar to old school animations with the character design and movements. The story and animation move at a nice pace, allowing the viewers glimpses and suggesting how their story proceeded while not bogging them down with the details. Considering that it was created by a comedian who named himself after his favourite fighting game, it is an impressive result.

The music is a big reason behind why I rate Furiko highly. The melancholic music fits Furiko very well even though the same BGM is used throughout the entire short film that shows the life of two people. The music in the beginning scenes with the high school invokes a sense of nostalgia, and compounds the sadness of their problems and the eventual loss of the girl.

Overall, Furiko is what every short film should aspire to be. In a time where everyone is trying to make their stories more complicated and issues contrived, Furiko chooses to use an already over-used story and simply made it interesting through the animation and music. It is definitely worth a watch is you have a few minutes to spare and have the sudden urge to experience a sudden bout of emotions.

A story about two people, they meet by a lucky encounter, the women falls in love and by time the men follows. It is a simple story, one that all of us live through, it is a story about life.

In this 3 minute video there was almost as much emotion as a 12-24 episode emotion and drama filled anime. As the pendulum swings time passes by and we are able to witness their life, the happy moments and the sad ones, their regrets and grief. Since there isn't much to review in this video other then the story and since I don't want to ... spoil anything, I will just explain what I learned from the video.

The first thing that I learned from this video was how much a single choice can have difference in our life, we often forget how much each of the choices we choose in our daily life effect us because we do them all the time and don't see an immediate effect, but each of our choices in the long term will have life changing consequences. Most of us already know that but forget it again and again, and sometimes needs to be reminded of it.

The second thing was, to remember that one day we all will die, that is why no matter what happens we should be careful to not regret our actions, each day we spend is a day lost, a day that we can't take back. Before we sleep we need to ask ourselves, did I do anything today that I regret? Was there anything that I would had wished to do differently? And if you find anything at all that you wished you could do differently, then you must again remind yourself, you don't have an eternity to fix it, so you must fix it now, while you still can. Or at the end, when it is too late to do anything about it, you will regret it and wish that you had done something about it sooner.

Just because you did all you could about something doesn't mean you can fix it, things might still go wrong. At that moment all you can do is understand that, that is just how life works, you can at least rest easy, because you did all you could do.

I would recommend everyone to watch it, if possible with a clear mind and in a silent environment. You might dislike it, that can't be helped, the video won't click with everyone the same way, but it is only 3 minute long and I doubt you would mind if at the end all you lost was your 3 minutes.

[STORY: 8/10]
Furiko has only three minutes to convey its story, and it completely nails it without any words being spoken. As a flipbook, you wouldn't expect it to do much of anything besides be a cool little animation, but this is so much more than most. Every frame counts and works to tell us an emotionally gripping story about a man who regrets his mistakes and tries to turn back time to fix them, only to realize that his denial won't allow for his retribution by means of doing the impossible. It really hits home the inevitability of time and how you should use it ... as best you can because you can never get it back once it's gone.

[ART: 7/10]
The art isn't amazing by any means, but for a flipbook, it works and my expectations aren't as high as they would be for a full-on animated series. The story works well enough with what it has and comes together well.

[SOUND: 9/10]
The song that plays in the background does very well to fit the theme and evoke emotion in the viewer. Without this, Furiko wouldn't be the same, as it brings so much feeling into the piece and only improves it.

[CHARACTER: 8/10]
For this type of animation that's only three minutes, I'm not expecting any amazing character development to take place. It goes through the character's entire adult life and does a great job of portraying them at each moment and showing how they're affected by the hardships they face, which is honestly all it needed to do.

[ENJOYMENT/OVERALL: 8/10]
While Furiko is not comparable to other shows that have hours and even days to develop their characters and story, for the amount of time it takes up, it makes every second count and continues to be an enjoyable experience and get me emotional each time I've watched it. Three minutes are used extremely well and I don't have many gripes at all with this piece. This is what other flipbooks should aspire to be.

Story:
Furiko is brief but still manages to convey a meaningful message. It is a story of a man full of regrets and how he deals with the sad reality that time can't be reset. Most men will eventually experience this at some point in their lifetime. It is a simple story, but one that is rare in this medium. It is touching and realistic. This special is a necessary watch.

Character:
The main character, most of the time, is indifferent towards others. He is a pessimist and a klutz, but one who is common among humans. He is someone many adults can relate, but not celebrate. ... His daily life is a painful cycle of adulthood. It's not that this guy had hit rock bottom or anything, but he lacks appreciation of the people around him. One can be jealous of the life he has, but for some reason, he lives an unfulfilling existence.

Presentation:
The flow of the story is fast just like a music video. The art is simplistic and suitable. The song chosen splendidly encapsulates the feeling of nostalgia. It is surrounded by a melancholic vibe.