Wonder isn't particularly visually mind bending, in fact I imagine anyone watching this has seen similar blobby animated doodles in the past, either as little animated gifs or as more properly realised flash animations on Newgrounds or someplace like that. It isn't boring, but since I am such a visually minded person when it comes to film criticism I was naturally drawn to the mechanical process of the movement, and in that respect the film doesn't blow me away. It's merely quite pretty.
What distinguishes this one is that it's hand drawn and that it was made over the course of a year, with 24 frames being drawn in one day as a strict timetable. That it was hand drawn does not interest me in the slightest, but the strict structuring of development is actually quite interesting to me as it brings out the devices of improvisation and the process of shifting interests.
Essentially the film is a fascinating visual diagram of animator Mizue's trains of thought, in that his imagination is captured for a few days or a week maybe on one specific idea before moving on to another. One idea is a series of colourful amorphous blobs drifting without purpose until they are dissected by a rigid spike running around in a circle, but then a second later it all dissolves and a new idea emerges. Perhaps not all the ideas are visually captivating, but some of them are and anyway the cycle of their inception and then retirement is more than enough to make this short worth watching regardless.
The ending segment makes me want to see Mizue tackle paint-on-film animation, as it reminded me of The Dante Quartet by Stan Brakhage.
