Reviews

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.