Santa Company: Manatsu no Merry Christmas

The real litter was the friends we made along the way.
Shout outs to Google Mail.

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Congratulations MAL for getting the honour to host this.

Character design was alright I guess. Moon Santa was terrifying.
Why did this air so late after Christmas.
What did this have to do with Christmas.
Save the whales. Pick up your bottles kids.
I'm really desperately trying to reach the minimum character count here, does it show.
Um.
Also a bootleg Ghostbusters believe it or not.
Apparently there's more to this series but whether or not you know of it I don't think matters cos this was it's own thing.

Well... What should I say

The anime itself was better than I expected it to be, the art was great and the ending was amazing.
The story was all over the place and didn’t really make a lot of sense, but it did what it was supposed to do:
Tell people about all the trash in the ocean

As this anime is probably aimed at kids aged 4-9 you can’t expect much story.

Characters were alright, I especially liked Thomas and Santa.

For being free, this anime was really good.

The live chat made the anime pretty funny, shoutout to Google Mail and all the other amazing people!

Anyway, Im tired, bye

story- 4
while I love the message, the story itself is not very well executed, I think the biggest limiting factor was the 30 minute run times, due to this they could not have the proper setup needed in order to establish needed plot points. Additionally for being a 30-minute show, the begging was far to slow, it felt like 80% of the episode was just an introduction
Art-6
while there are some problems with CGI it is overall pretty fine and I liked the color pallet,
sound-8
easy the best part of the show, the sound design and music was actually very good and fit the atmosphere
Character-5
the charters felt uninspired and dull, nothing really unique, but this is not there fault once again it is hard to make an interesting Charactershow out in a 30 minute short
Enjoyment-4
I saw myself watching the timer the entire time almost witching it would be over, but there are some moments that are pretty good and I enjoyed
Overall-5
I think the idea was good, and I loved the message but the execution was pretty bad

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Santa Company, at least this version, does a pretty mediocre job of telling a story with an environmental message for kids. I know there's another short film and a full-length movie from a few years ago, but as I haven't seen those, I'm just going to judge this on its own.

There are going to be slight spoilers from here on out, but since it's a 30-minute short film... I hope it's not too inconvenient.

Story - 4

Although this is a PG film, definitely meant for kids, I feel like the story was still really underdeveloped. Kids don't necessarily need super complex stories, especially if the focus is the message rather than the characters' development, but I do think this could've been better. There's no motivation behind what the characters do, at least no good motivation. Mint wants to be as good as her brother/live up to Panal (I think), Noah wants to clean up to prevent animals from dying like his pet(???) whale did, but these are all motivations that are dropped more than halfway through the film and without further elaboration. Also, the reveal of the trash dragon Mook was quite strange. The only other time we hear about him is when the teacher from the beginning says that Mint was working on an assignment about "Mook, Santa's enemy," and even then that's all we hear about it.

Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but I feel like there could've been something more coherent for this film.

Art - 9

I think the art style is super cute and the color design is awesome. The main cast certainly look unique without being gaudy. One point off for the CGI though. It wasn't bad, just... strange.

Sound - 9

Sound design was pretty good. I don't usually listen very hard for sound design, but nothing sounded bad to me. The voice actors are all also really incredible. So, a 9.

Character - 5

Like I said in the story section, the characters just didn't feel fleshed out in any way. They were all pretty one-dimensional. They don't have to be super complex if they're just for a short environmental story, but I wish there was more of a sense of their goals and motivations. Or some kind of change in their characters...

Enjoyment - 7

Despite all of the flaws in the characters/story, it was still kind of fun to watch. It was visually pleasing and the music during the credits was definitely really nice.

Overall - 5

I think the message behind the short film is a great one. We should all do our part in keeping the world, especially the oceans, clean and not contributing to the large amounts of litter out there. I admire the team's efforts to make an entertaining film meant to entertain and educate the public about this issue. I just think audiences would enjoy it more or take it more seriously if there was some more work put into the story so that it doesn't seem so heavy-handed.

I really like the concept, I just wish there could've been a better product for such an interesting idea and such an important issue.

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