Reviews

Tsumiki no Ie is a twelve minute long animated film. It's an art piece about life and memories. The basic structure is that an old man is living in a town that's slowly flooding. He builds an extra layer onto his house to stay above the waters, but he drops his pipe in the process. He gets a scuba suit and goes through the layers of his house, reflecting on his life.Even though his life's events are familiar, they're shown in a way that's actually engaging and interesting.

The only real character in this is the old man. There are some people who appear in his memories and who he interacts with, but you get almost nothing about them except how they appeared to him, since there's no dialogue. The film does do a really good job of giving the viewer insight into his thoughts and character just by showing you snippets of his life. In that way, the film is also a character study.

The art is more reminiscent of a children's book than anything I've ever seen in an anime. And no, that isn't an insult. It has a unique and vibrant look. There might be better artwork out there but it still looks really good.

As I mentioned earlier, there is no dialogue. As such, there's no voice acting to judge. The music and sound effects are used very specifically to create and maintain the tone throughout the film.

The yuri factor is a 1/10, just in case you couldn't figure that out from the character description.

My final rating for Tsumiki no ie is a 9/10. Given the length, they couldn't have done much to improve it. It has more substance in its twelve minutes than a lot of anime manage with a full length series. Really, it's easy to see why it's won so many awards. Take twelve minutes and watch it