Airy Me

This came to me via a recommendation of a friend/acquaintance after a short chat about 00:08 because of the similarity of their art style. Both are emotionally driven, hand drawn pencil ellipsoidal animations with a series of repetitions eventually coming to a kind of explanatory crescendo. The difference for me was that the narrative of 'Airy Me' has clarity that 00:08 was lacking.

The video was directed by visionary Yoko Kuno, an animator known for a highly stylized animation style of schoolyard drawings and large, feminine, soft eyes created the video using 3000 individual hand-drawn illustrations and utilized the look of a child drawing pictures to ... create a feeling of innocence. The colours are subtle and hazy, just like in a dream and the incorporation of butterflies as a method of scene transition was a nice way of connecting the artist's, Cuushe's newest album, titled "Butterfly Case", with the ideology of childhood fantasies.

The music for this video is shoegaze, which is very otherworldly and ambient. A bit like Aphex Twin, Beach House, or Black Tambourine with the vocals of Sigur Rós. Interestingly, the director decided to go with a fast paced animation style for the drawings rather than a more lackadaisical one that would have better matched the mood of the music.

In juxtaposition to the airy musical stylings, the action of the first 1:06 of the video happens very fast. Trying to keep up with it reminded me of the first time I watched Yojōhan Shinwa Taikei (The Tatami Galaxy) with its speedy subtitles and speech patterns - it was difficult to keep up with it and I had to watch it twice in a row because I missed crucial elements from my first viewing. Oddly enough, the fast pace matches with the slower, transcendental one gave me the feeling of hurried panic - as though I was missing something fundamentally crucial that I could never catch up to. The next part is slower in pace, but the feeling of cruciality remains as the plot begins to unveil itself and fold back to the start. Suddenly the fast pace part makes more sense and we are left with a strong emotional charge.

The story reminded me a bit of Ōtomo Katsuhiro's “Akira” or Osamu Tezuka. I don’t want to spoil it, but you’ll see what I mean when you watch the video. There is a hopelessness that surrounds it, while keeping its audience entranced. The only real flaw I sensed was the lack of any connection I felt to it. While I found the content fascinating to think about, I would not necessarily call it memorable. I suspect I have more of a connection to the narrative of Foster the People’s “Don’t Stop”, but at least it is interesting while it lasts.

*Disclaimer*
Just personal scratch.
Advised, possible spoilers.
Opinion & Informal

Art: 7/10 It was good and detailed.

Animation: 7/10 Mostly to show the skill of the animator in my opinion, but it was very fluid. May make some dizzy.

Plot: 6/10 There's an actual plot here but it wasn't that interesting.
...
Development: 6/10 There's actual development, but hard to decipher any deeper meaning at all aside from what the synopsis tells us.

Music: 5/10 There's actual music, but I didn't particularly like it and couldn't judge its appropriateness.

Overall: 6/10 It was fine. Most notable for the art and animation. There is a very simple but not fleshed out plot. Music was not memorable or didn't feel too engaging to the story.

Since it's a music video...

Music: the song is amazing. The singing is celestial, and the beat complements the animation, being fairly slow-moving and simple towards the start, hasty when the animation starts to speed up, and droning towards the end.

Video: although the art style is fairly simple, the art is still good, and the animation is extremely fluid The way outlines and shadows constantly change colours is mesmerising. That being said, I didn't like how gross and, more importantly, nonsensical it got towards the end. It really just explodes into chaos, even though the first half definitely could have lead to an ending more grounded ... in reality.

Overall, it's worth watching for the song, just turn your brain off towards the end of the video.