Ginga no Uo Ursa Minor Blue

This 20-minute anime short comes from Tamura Shigeru, an animator/manga artist, who has worked in several animated works including The Glassy Ocean and Phantasmagoria and has contributed to the defunct manga magazine Garo. For me, finding the information on the director and this anime is pretty obscure and I couldn’t find more info on him but hopefully, the little info I gotten might help this.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: This adventurous story of a boy named Uri and an old man takes place in the cosmic Milky Way where the starfish live. This is the tale of their fantasy journey in search of ... the mysterious monster fish. Yuri discovers a new star near Ursa Minor. Further observation of the newly found celestial body lets his grandfather witness the transformation of the constellation into a diabolic looking fish swimming up the Milky Way. It's up to Yuri and his grandfather to stop all the destruction this monstrous fish is causing.

Now, the only two main characters or the ones worth talking about is, obviously, Uri and his grandfather and to sum them up, they are straight-forward simple and was simple as they are, they didn’t need any more characterization. There isn’t any deep dialogue between the two of them but they do have a purpose throughout the short and weren’t just faffing about nothing. The same thing can be said about the story, too. It is a very straight-forward and simple story with no unnecessary filler or idiocy.

The animation reminds me a bit of the old TinTin cartoon that was on HBO and maybe the comics, too, but I have no recollection of that and it is very non-traditional Japanese animation (i.e., back to surreal style anime) and at first, it did look a bit cheap but cheap doesn’t mean it will be bad and sometimes the basics and simplicity do work out in your favor and I think I said this too many times but it can work out if it’s done right. Really, how many times have I said that during my reviews? The music, I really didn’t pay much attention to, but it does play like a 16-bit RPG game but not much of a stand-out.

FINAL VERDICT: This short does the simplest style of animation, story, characters and music but sometimes using what you got to make the best anime short doesn’t make you cheap. It’s simple but it is a good anime short to watch.
Would I recommend this to you? Yes, I would.