Oct 19, 2016
This might be one of the best things I have ever watched.
Despite my dull persona, I don't think I normally say stuff that's this outlandish, but with Shelter, I feel like something crucial needs to be said about why this kind of content is totally acceptable.
Let's get two things out of the way. Undeniably, this video looks good. It's well drawn, well animated, and is certainly eye catching with its colorful visuals and impressively imaginative landscapes. As music, this is not something that's suited to me, but I can at least understand people who think that Porter's music is palatable to them.
My adoration for this
...
piece is not the story. This should be taken as a music video that is trying to be just Porter's music meshed with beautifully animated sequences. I understand that it isn't overtly concerned with story.
Shelter exemplifies everything that is okay with storytelling in anime, namely that rather than attempting to tell a elaborate story, it takes a classic shortcut by designing a cute character, throwing her into a position of bittersweet melancholy, and using that as a means of creating an amazing music video experience. For a work that was designed around music and hype animation, the story is only satisfactory.
People are praising the emotional resonance in the story and its ability to bring out the loneliness lost in the profundity of memory. It doesn't matter what people are praising because this is a review from my perspective and with my own opinions. I just thought I'd mention what everyone else thinks anyways.
The fact that Shelter goes out of its way to show for a split second the main character's letter from her father, to invoke the viewer to spend time and read it on a second watch, tells me that they took the time to add more detail than your average music video. However, that is undermined precisely by the video's own amazing audiovisuals. Much like many other anime designed purely for music videos and cute flashy animations, we are given not substance, but rather a montage of a young innocent girl cherishing sweet memories with someone we barely meet.
Sure it can be cute, and that's kind of the point. Shelter amazes its audience by presenting us with its fascinating visuals, the ostensible undertones of a post-apocalyptic world, the perceived loneliness of being potentially the last human in the universe, and given that it wasn't ever meant to be a story, I can in good conscience, recommend this music video to everyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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