Kikumana

Only six minutes. What is possible to tell during this time? For example, about infinity and depth of human knowledge, about a tide of life, about the Universe which is hidden in a book, about riddles of the past and movement in the future, about development and stagnation, fading and the birth, about loneliness among books and the real depression. What is it? Fantastic fairy tale? Madness, incarnate fear, a hallucination, surrealism, a sketch on writing-book fields, history about terrible loneliness of the child in the illusive world of adults? Or is it simply black-and-white melancholy of self-knowledge?

In Kikumana everything is based on associations ... and mood: everyone understands how he or she wants. And we never can not understand a true plan of the author. This movie opened slightly to us a door in any not clear, but close to us, world ... and closed.

If you include music more loudly, you will feel effect"brain squeezings" more better. At some point goosebumps ran on my skin . It is undoubtedly reached by means of music which consists of classical noise and chaos of various sounds. These sounds oppress nervous system and cause unconscious negative emotional experiences.

In any case, Yoshiura Yasuhiro's work associates at me with works Shinkai Makoto, though they have different approaches to studying activity. One tries to comprehend life as it is, another does an emphasis on lyrics and the love drama.

After viewing this clip you set involuntarily by questions - Who I am? Who are you? Is the white mask with holes for eyes? Where I go? Why I live? What it is necessary to find to remember the essence? After all when you have no memoirs you are not person. Or person? Is ignorancel pleasure? Or knowledge is force? Also that is more terrible: remember or forget?

A decent experimental short. There's no dialogue or discernible story. Just a girl with what appears to be a mask shuffling through a small little abode, reading books, dreaming, hallucinating, and being visited by strange figures. Visually, it's compelling enough and consists of various animation techniques and 3D modeling—on the audio side, there's effective sound design and piano music.

I suppose there's some specific concept or themes explored, though to really grasp what is being said—if anything—one will have to pay attention to visual cues. With the dreamlike lapses into temporal, strange worlds, it is reminiscent of Alice and Wonderland or some other fairytale.

The element ... of books and the exploration of space reminds me a bit of Jorge Luis Borges weird short fiction with endless libraries of books and plenty of surrealism, and the ominous final zoom out suggests themes of alienation and isolation reminiscent of E.M. Forster's sci-fi story The Machine Stops, a story often referred to as prescient because of the isolating nature of technological absorption—in that story, all characters shunned human contact, and stayed in little cells inside of a machine, slaving away at whatever their avocation was. This short appears to be the same, only we have surrealism tying everything together instead of sci-fi dystopianism.

A bit of a head-scratcher, but there doesn't appear to be anything terribly profound hiding away in the murk of this short film. Just somewhat charming aesthetics and muddled visual storytelling from a small studio. Not bad.

Rate 3/4
no vocals/art piece

Story
No clear path to follow. The patch jumped in and out. Since the path was not clear neither could the message be. It could be a say on imprisonment or amnesiac but i thought it was a take on development. Development the stage where we grow in our mind and on whom we are. Books are engraved as fountains of knowledge. So, it is a no wonder we turn to them in times of troubles. Alas, in terms of defining our individual paths the books can't help. For books are general. With such a wide spread of knowledge it is hard to ... wrap things in a nice small box for everyone has different taste. Which means i can't say you are going to become a lawyer who enjoys a sand-which heavy with mayo for you might dislike mayo. But, they can be guidelines but tons of tons have to be read to full picture.

Art
A mess. Normally black and white films can work here it does not. I can understand the black and white concept to show confusion which does a good job at but in certain if not a good portion of the film some segments were far to bright or far too dark. Contrast was flawed. Also, some things were too blurry.

The main character stood out for she lacked a vital necessity. To this moment i don't quite have a grasp on why that was. Perhaps, she did not have it to begin with as indicated by the picture shown in the film? Or perhaps it more symbolical to the fact of one's limitation on themselves?

Character
Nothing direct in terms of character development. It is mostly up for interpretation but it does convey solitude.