Reviews

This was recommended to me by a friend whom I had told not long before being instructed to wander this rabbit hole out of plaintive desire that I was only into animated shorts now and that I had long worn thin of the longform narrative in cartoons. I sensibly wanted a respite from the inconsolable might the average 12-24 episodes had on my fragile emotional state, and thus didn't want to have to deal with any potential long-term investment in established worlds and mundanities associated with "the continuity", so to speak. This friend of mine, you see, was a major Tezuka enthusiast. He would collect supply drop after supply drop of commemorative Osamu Tezuka memorabilia be it autobiographies or secondhand accounts of the man's working life through the late 20th century, and at the same time, urge others like myself who could muster an appetite for all things nerdy and secular in terms of interests to read Tezuka manga if only to glimpse the master at work through the lens of a reader living in modern times. Of course, I abstained for the longest time since I was not ready to hop aboard the "be all end all" express where the finality of art could be grasped by even the layman. NO, I WAS NOT READY TO FEAST MY EYES ON HIS BODY OF WORK JUST YET. I needed a bit more breathing space before I could.

And then it clicked in my head. What if I started not with his written oeuvre, but his directorial craft? That would be conducive for a first-timer like myself, would it not? Heh, talk about a dash of adept decision-making, that one. I decided to take my aforementioned friend up on his suggestion to check out this short after another I'd already seen beforehand, Broken Down Film, and what a buffet for the senses it was! The editing was supreme, and not to mention (likely) instrumental in the pioneeering and subsequent realization of Satoshi Kon's inimitable magic with the camera and how he plays around with the editing in his films. I'm sure many other industry creatives were inspired by Tezuka's work in the early phases of their careers.

And now on to the short itself, which i will keep concise and to the point. It is simply a masterstroke of technique. Secondary to the already prominent displays of gyroscopic camera movement which would immediately pass for peer review by academics at the time of its release, coupled with the unconventional angles the pov of both character and viewer introduce whilst mid-air and on the ground, the short's defining quality is how attention to detail is NEVER ESCHEWED, regardless of what you may opine quietly by yourself. Denial only results in misappreciation for this particular vision of Tezuka's, and how could one not stand in awe at the glory of those towering cityscapes beholden to a regressing society, not one that is privy to change and environmental preservation? All of it amounts to a perfectly illustrated premonition of a future yet to come and everything from its charm to its grievous fixations on death and dysfunction paints a forlorn picture of the human race's trajectory at the height of the global economic boom in the 80s. Do yourself and your kindred a favor by watching this short, but do so at your own discretion seeing as the takeaway may alienate some from what it ultimately dares to convey.