My Little Goat

Needless to say, for a graduation work, this is a phenomenal showcase of storytelling talent. Tomoki Misato's retelling of a classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale merely takes the original's skeleton, whereas the central focus is on an entirely different angle toward psychological trauma, be it memories or permanent scars that are difficult to confront. The innocence of a group of baby sheep is exploited for grim imagery, and this could have easily gone in the opposite direction, however, I commend Misato's choice to rotate the moral compass to responsibility, the conscious choice to protect the defenseless. The film's parallel allegories are extremely effective in developing ... the ominous air that creeps around in many of the scenes, also contingent on an unsettling score composed of low shrieking and augmented scales, only sparsely releasing to build tension upon the fearful eyes staring at one another.

The stop-motion mechanics are very dynamic, utilizing visual techniques that are traditionally seen in digital animation (e.g., jumping into a picture frame, or hiding in a jar). It's storyboarded with consideration of the full view of multiple characters simultaneously making micro-movements for a final sequence that's intricately choreographed, while the camera's approach to this climax is through blocking and below-eye-level shots. The tainted felt material used for the mangled characters eerily contrasts the unharmed sheep, displaying tears in the wool to reveal colors of bruised blue or pink. My Little Goat excels in concurrently producing layers of symbolism, and the sheer success of the narrative in ten minutes is remarkable. I have high hopes for Misato's career, and it seems he's already being recognized for his abilities in his TV debut. A deceptively distorted tale of unconditional acceptance.

A 10 minutes long movie made with stopmotion technique, where almost every scene has a deeper meaning to itself. Although the story is rather simple, it may leave the viewer reflecting for a while after watching it. The creepiness is present as expected from a psychological horror and the appearance of the characters combined with the stopmotion techinique help to reinforce this feeling of uneasiness.

The characters' development is ok, considering there isn't much time to give each of them the proper attention, they're still able to pass the message the author intended.

For me the catch of this movie was the atention to detail, the ... subtlety in the enviroment, the reaction of the characters to the situations they've been exposed is too similar to real life.


A movie worth watching.

My Little Goat is an 11 minute short movie, from the director behind the beloved series Pui Pui Molcar and the director of Inaka Isha. My Little Goat has a wonderful look to it, while managing to be gruesome, almost horrify even for older audiences.

Before going further with the review if you haven't seen the film, be warned that the film has concepts of sexual assault/abuse of children.

My Little Goat has a very simplistic story that turns very horrific. After a wolf eats her children, a goat mother tries to save her children from death via being devoured. After saving almost all of the children, ... the mother is unable to find one, Toruku. After these events, the mother finds "Toruku" and brings him home after being lost in the woods for a long time.

My Little Goat has a touch of innocence to it, while still managing to be very realistic and very dark. With how the film pans out, it links childhood innocence and fantasy with the horrifying truth that some children, that some parents have to deal with in the real world.

*spoilers ahead, be warned*
What made this more real for me was when Toruku is found by, what I can interpret, his brother. The more fearful Toruku gets, the more that we see that to him, his brother is the wolf in his life, and is the same person who assaults him. While this is seen in two instances, when he reveals his scars, and when Toruku is actually attacked, this becomes very surreal and just generally hard to watch until you know there is a good ending.
**

The characters play off of each other significantly well. Albeit, there is not much depth to the goat siblings except for the sister goat Toruku gives his shawl to, but the rest of the characters play very significant roles and profundity in background.
The story itself was nice and somewhat pleasing, but some aspects of the film will confuse viewers unless you watch the film a couple of times more. There are certain aspects of the film that I feel like not many people will pick up on or understand until there is a second viewing or even a third.
The art for this film is very lovely. I'm very profound of when directors use different media, clay, paint, etc., in their films. Tomoki is known for his needle-point works in him films and I feel like with this film using this kind of material, it adds more of a specialty to it and refines it as notable because it is animated this way.

Overall, I fairly enjoyed this short films. I originally found the origins of this through a video edit, I liked how the art looked and watching this, this felt very enjoyable and worth showing to people who peak interest in horror.