Ai

Just really, really creepy. If having your mind crawled on by spiders is what you're into, go for it. But with terrible art, terrible voice acting, two plain and stereotypical characters, and a terrible story (was there even a story?), the four-minute-long anime (can it be called an anime?) was almost unwatchable. I counted the seconds.

The best part about this anime? It was only four minutes long. Seriously, I hated it.

Story:
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fan of narratives that are negative. By that, I mean stories where the hero loses in the end and the whole them is essentially, "Life sucks because X." Ai doesn't say something exactly quite like that, but it is a bastardized perspective on love. Perhaps I'm looking 'too deep' into this work but when you realize that Yoko Ono also contributed to this work, you haveta sit back sarcastically and go, "Oh man now we're getting to intense levels of intellect left untapped in the human mind for years!"

Goodness, I didn't even hate this work ... and more or less found it to be just another work to add to my Completed list but in retrospect, there's just so much to dislike about it. I mean, alright, I'm not gonna go nuts with details but the premise is a woman chasing after a man with a net and then treating him like a dog. Not so much bothered by it when its from Kuri Yoji but knowing that Yoko Ono was a part of it immediately makes me think, "There's something wrong here." And while you might say to me, "Paraturtle, she only did the Music, that's it!" I'd respond that there's no way she solely did just the music when 2 people are working on 1 work. There's no doubt she contributed to it.

But also, it's just annoying to see such a bad view on Love because obviously it's not love. I mean, maybe it isn't obvious? Or, perhaps the original intention is to show what love isn't? Even so, does that discussion even need to be had? And, if so, is there not a better way to express such concepts? Absolutely, considering this short is neither entertaining nor is it comedic.

But also, maybe I just seriously dislike Yoko Ono and see her as nothing more than a hack.


Art:
Art looks fine and some of the perspective shots look neato.


Sound:
I don't like Yoko Ono and hearing people say Ai over and over is annoying.


Character:
No character, really. Not one that matters, at least.


Enjoyment:
Boring but at least I added to my Completed list.


((If you liked this review, feel free to check out my others! I review most manga and anime I finish!))

Rate 3
Japanese raw but it was just one word repeated over and over.

Story
Could have used a better introduction. Seemed to have just right to the story. Story was a bit confusing. If it was about love why the running away and the leash? Conclusion was nice but could have been better.

Art
Worked well with plot. Characters poorly drawn. At least there was some color and the characters weren't morphed.

Sound
An okay hearing test (joke). You got your high and low pitches or voices. Which not only were uncalled for but did not match the art. Why did it just have to be one word? Animations were ... good.

Overall: nothing gained. Audio annoying. Art meh. Story lame. If you like art pieces check this. If not don't bother.

It's really interesting going through the "avant garde" section of an anime website. There was a lot of very obscure stuff I hadn't heard of, but there are diamonds in the rough like Studio 4c shorts, a few animation compilations, Atsushi Wada, Koji Yamamura, Keita Kurosaka... surprisingly even Takashi Ito, whom I never thought of as animation--his stuff is live action with a bit of stop motion and time lapses (but this is not the puppet or claymation type of stop motion; rather it's used for experimental effect). There are always the debates about what constitutes anime, with the assumption that something like Kuri's work ... isn't anime because of a lack of commercial viability or the industry norms we expect from "anime," but this is just the general word for animation from a Japanese perspective, though we tend to only call it anime when we're talking about commercial Japanese animation from a western perspective.

There is also always the expected commentary of "get a brain moranz" if you want to understand the genius message behind this esoteric eclectic surreal omfg god tier work of art from the great auteur. Yeah... I mean, it's not especially complex. It just doesn't hold your hand with a precise script. There is room for interpretation. It's about love, and it seems to be largely one-sided, and Kuri's portrayal of the emotion is cynical, to say the least. The male spends most of his time running, while the female pursues. She does various things to keep him anchored to her, such as chaining him like a dog, but to no avail. She even eats him and poops him out... XD

It's filled with visual metaphors like that. Hahahah... anyway, it's not completely one-sided. He seems to lead her on at times (like the barrel part). To be entirely honest, it always bugged me that the female was so much bigger than the male. Made me think that was the little boy's mom running after him and just wishing he would love her, but he doesn't want her cooties. She does knock him over the head like a caveman, takes him home to rape him in bed, then has him strut his stuff around town on a dog leash, though, so... I hope that's not what Kuri was going for. :)

Average MAL user: "Sounds pretty hot. Is the manga version available?"

The art is really crude looking and sooooo very flat, other than some not too subtle perspective here and there--some segments look like a beginning class in perspective. In terms of the visual department... there are much better artistic animations out there from the 60s or before, whether it be Alexeieff/Parker, Disney, Starewicz, Jan Lenica, hell even the Osamu Tezuka shorts from Kuri's own country around the same time... but I suppose most of those were utilizing bigger teams, and it seems Kuri was on his lonesome.

Probably the best aspect is the eerie atmosphere created by the barren landscapes, reductionism of the soundtrack that's composed of whispers, moans, repetition of the word "Ai" (love), dissonant sounds and drones, etc. Yoko Ono is the composer (she's better than The Beatles, btw, change my mind :). Elsewhere, I've seen it mentioned that Toru Takemitsu was actually the composer. I really have no clue. That made me think maybe Ono was just the female voice, but that was apparently Kyoko Kishida (Woman in the Dunes).

Eh, I've enjoyed plenty of avant-garde and experimental films and animation in my time, and I do think Ai has some intriguing qualities, but it's ugly as sin, and it's permeated with the vibe of "It's good art if we portray humanity in a negative manner, alienate the audience, and have the characters perform random acts without any real explanation, so the observer can interpret what's going on, right?" Better luck next time. I'll stick with Yuri Norstein or Jan Svankmajer or Jacques Drouin or something like that. :\

Also, tbh, Kuri is better when his vision is turned more towards surrealism. This short is a bit more straightforward than some of his others.