Rayca

“Where I am...?”

In the 31st century only data exist. What is a better way to learn about human civilization than to send data back to our time to learn about human civilization? Rayca follows the journey of said data to out 21st century world, trying to grasp the concept of our daily life. This short OVA sheds light on our daily life, things we have taken for granted that we forgot the joy the bring us.

Rayca journeys through this daily life of ours, she moves from place to place, scene after scene, trying to experience human life and trying to enjoy all the good ... that it brings. Sure, life is not always fun and cheery, each individual have their own set of problems that they need to work on, yet amidst all of that, there lies the beauty of life. Rayca tries to experience the little things that we do on a daily basis, she observes the things we do and try to earn about it. She observes a train as it passes through the crossing, the fish as they are swimming about, cars moving quickly, a cat left alone in the middle of the city, a photo shoot, and an interview. Each of these little snippets brings a smile to Rayca’s lips as she is experiencing the best of humanity. Standing in the aquarium, watching the fish swim about, and perhaps reminiscing about that loss in the 31st century.

Actual people were hard to make out, they blended into the background making it difficult to distinguish them from their surroundings. Yet the mannequins were clearly made out and they stood out from the background. They looked more human than the actual humans, yet they were all the same; same height, shape, and color. In our world individuality is lost; we are all the same. We dress the same way, we wear our hair the same way, there is nothing that differentiate us from other people, we have became mannequins with no sense of the self. Only our shadows are the indication that we are still alive, and maybe one day we will work into gaining back our individuality. To become different, not blending into the backgrounds that it is near impossible to tell us apart.

Amidst the beauty of the world we live in, there is destruction. There are wars, and killings in human history since the dawn of time. Yet, even those sad and ugly incidents contribute the beauty of our world. It is a contradiction that helps in understanding our world, to learn about what we have and how to appreciate it.

Pictures are memories. Every picture captures a moment in life that brings either a smile or a frown when we look at it. It reminds us of past times, of what we have experienced and how we lived our life. Pictures are treasures; a link to the past.

The animation is pretty good. It is a blend of surreal drawings to a full CGI character. The backgrounds and city animation is stunning. Each environment is made out to look as close to reality as possible. Buildings, cars, trains, and zebra crossings are all things we see on daily basis. We have walked around the city at night, walked between houses in small neighborhoods, rode on the train, and interacted with each other at some point. Yet there is this one character that is in full CGI, very distinguishable from everything else, easy to make out. Clearly she is an outsider that does not belong here. A visitor, observing us in our own world. She is there, yet at the same time, she isn’t.

Perhaps, the sound is the best aspect of this short OVA. Sounds were taken from the surrounding environment. The sound of the train, the flutter of the birds, the camera’s shutter, and so on and so forth. Sounds are driven from our world. The music used during a number of scenes did much more than just providing sound. The music carried out dialogues, told a story of sad incidents, yet amidst the sadness there is always a ray of hope, that things are going to get better. There lies the beauty of our world, that no matter how grim things are, they are bound to turn around and good things will happen to those who wait.

Rayca is the only character featured in this OVA, she takes us through a journey in our own world. She shows us our world from a perspective we may have forgotten about. She tells us that this world we live in is a beautiful world. As she walks through the city and observe the little things, she smiles. Happy with what she sees around her, enjoying the life that we humans have. This character is a reminder that we should appreciate our world, that even the smallest of things is actually beautiful.

This OVA consists of a handful of different shorts all featuring the same character; the, titular, Rayca. However, all of them are super boring!

Rayca simply does random things in each of these, wears different outfits, and nothing really happens in any of them. there's no story to follow, it's just Rayca doing something, and then it fades to black. It doesn't help that all of the shorts also feel completely disconnected from each other, so there's not even any kind of plotline to follow between each of them, and there's no common theme shared between them. As far as I can tell, Rayca is literally ... the only thing all of these shorts share in common.

Now, let's talk about the visual style. The whole thing is CG, which I'm already not a fan of, but to make things worse... it was made way back in 2002. To be completely honest, the shorts look like a bunch of pre-rendered cutscenes for some kind of low budget Sega Saturn or PS1 game. Like, the whole thing really doesn't look very good at all. I mean, I could probably get better looking visuals out of a launch PS2 game, which would have been out at this point.

The music is some pretty stock sounding ambient stuff, which sounds decent, but incredibly generic. The song that plays over the credits is pretty good. Audio mix is otherwise kind of just below average.

Over all, though, sub-standard audio can't save a production this poor. The whole thing is kind of a pointless mess, and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. Seriously, It's not worth anybody's time. At the end of it, I actually sat there and let out a large "boo" at my computer monitor. Seriously, don't waste 15 minutes of your life. Just go watch something else.