Koi☆Sento

What an unusual anime this is.

It's a bit bizarre and I'm not Japanese so I'm not entirely educated on the significance of the deer and the abnormally large presence of Buddha statues. (I understand their importance in overall culture, but not the artistic meaning of their appearance in the anime.)

I thought the villains weren't that interesting and a bit strange. I did watch this dubbed, so it's entirely possible is the voices that did this for me.

I think it's too fast paced though that's entirely because of the short length of the anime.

The animation is decent. I think it can look jarring at ... times, but it's fine throughout. There are some beautiful shots through the anime, mostly when they are riding the deer.

Also, what was up with that freak deer?

Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was, and it's not that long so it's not like you're wasting that much time experiencing this anime.

Before watching this movie not too long ago, I had seen it pop up a couple of times while searching for movies to watch on a particular site with the English Dub only available. So last week (yeah I'm late deal with it), I decided to watch this 25 minute short film because I had nothing better to do and hadn't watched an anime film for a long while.

Yeah I thought the 25 minutes for this type of film was rather short and rushed. Although considering the animation's contrast was wayyyyy too bright in certain parts and each characters faces were rather stretchy,its understandable ... that some viewers might be relieved that its finally over at 25 minutes. I'm not speaking for everyone as we all have different tastes in different anime btw.

Yeah I personally think 3D should've been outta the picture for this film and instead make it full 2D. Too little too late Im afraid to say...

Anyways the main good part of this anime film is that the English Dub actors were honestly great! John Gremillion playing the main villain character was the best. It's too bad it didn't deep dive much on the character and why she turned out to be evil.

It's just a shame that this anime film went to waste, if the Dub actors weren't involved, I would give it a 2 or 3 but instead, I'm giving it a 6...

Overall Impression: A short (25 minutes, give or take) full CGI film about a boy meeting and falling in love with an escaped android, whose handlers will do anything to get her back. The CGI is not as bad as you'd think, but there isn't much here that's worth going out of your way for. This could have been more compelling as a full series, but there isn't much time to get to know or care about the characters with so much content crammed into the length of one episode of TV anime.

+ Positives: The CGI here actually looks pretty decent at times. There are ... some parts where it doesn't of course, but it benefits from how the entire thing is in CGI instead of poorly-integrated CGI elements clashing with a traditional hand-drawn 2D aesthetic. The facial expressions are more emotive than I typically expect from CGI as well. Some of the action, in particular the mech showdown in the Buddhist temple (there is A LOT going on in this short film), would have been impractical for a project of this scope without CGI, and some of it even looks pretty good. The pacing is brisk (almost TOO brisk, arguably) and it gives you enough of a resolution to be called a complete story, so it rarely gets boring.

- Negatives: Threadbare love story between Shinichi and Toto that feels like it skips several steps to get to its conclusion in the allotted time. Almost like a speedrun of a Makoto Shinkai film in its heavy-handed use of romcom cliches and implied supernatural tragedy, even though it came out several years before most of his best-known works. CGI character models look odd when viewed in profile instead of straight-on. Muddled setting that allegedly takes place several centuries in the future, but is just modern Japan with robots and holograms for all intents and purposes. Overly tidy and optimistic ending that robs some tragic scenes of their impact. Very rushed overall, there's enough here that it could have been made into a full series of Shinichi and Toto going on adventures while evading Toto's handlers, but most of the promising elements for the future get cut off by the need to wrap it up in 25 minutes.