Tori no Uta

ok i don't usually do reviews but i can't belive that such an interesting OVA hasn't been reviewed by anyone!
so i'm gonna try and do one :)
please excuse my eventual grammar mistakes...

"Tori no Uta" is a little 30 minutes OVA that barely has any plot and doesn't actually make too much sense...but for some reason i kept my eyes sticked to the monitor and watched all this...




... Story...7/10

As I said...there isn't much to say about the plot,it's basically about a guy that meets a girl on a rainy night inside a bus stop.He falls inlove with her but the next day she was nowhere to be found(although he knew where she stays).

from here you'll have to watch yourself because i would spoil :p...i can nly say it will involve some dreams and really strange stuff

this ova should be tagged under the genres: "mistery","supernatural","romance" & "trippin' "




Art....4/10

Art??what art??there's a succesion of images that change after about 30 seconds of on screen time...you can almost say that this looks like a VN from this point of view

but for some reason,it worked...it added to this anime's WTF factor
but i can't give the artwork more than 4 :p,poor Toei...




Sound...9/10

on the other side the music AMAZED me,it's an incredible OST for a little ova,I enjoyed every single background music,and it really compensates for the art problem
if your an BGM fan you're gonna love this ;)




Character...6/10

Characters?yeah they're not many characters,only 2(3 if we add the old hag)
there's the guy that falls in love with the girl,and the creepy girl of course :-)




Enjoyment...9/10

I don't know why,but this is REALLY enjoyable...my eyes were glued to the monitor for as long as this played(excpet for when i left to get me some icecream from the fridge :p)
maybe it's the music,or the dream factor...i don't know,but this is really entertaining!




Overall...7/10

on overall i gave this a 7 becauseof the music and entertainment factor :p

and here's the probable question you'd ask me if we were face to face...

Should I watch this?
Yes,if you like deep stuff...no,if you think Mars of Destruction is the best animu ever made.


anyways I hope you liked my review^^,
Rob.

I feel like it's not fair to judge this on the same basis as other anime, as it is clearly way too unique in it's format. Tori No Uta is really closer to an image book with the text being read out loud instead of written on the pages, given that the visual aspect of it consists of a succession of Yoshitaka Amano's paintings, with voice-overs for the narration and dialogue.

It's a very surreal, quite literally dreamlike experience as most of the story revolves around exploring the two main characters' dreams. There's a lot of room for personal interpretation, a lot of elements are ... clearly metaphorical and each dream gives you a lot of insight into the psyche of the characters, while also being strange and full of creativity. The broad strokes of the story are easy to follow though, and the art, despite the lack of animation, is extremely beautiful, intricate and expressive, which makes it easy to get invested.

I don't think it's an anime for everyone, you have to be open to unconventional and experimental stuff, but if you are I think you might find it to be a very enchanting and intriguing experience, I know I did, and I think it has the potential to resonate with you quite deeply if you find a little bit of yourself in the characters and their dreams. And besides that, if you're into Yoshitaka Amano's art, it's just a pure visual treat.

This OVA is a clearly metaphorical sequence, in which love is portrayed in a way that goes beyond the corporal and physical.
Let's start with the story of the boy (whose name throughout the story we do not know) falls in love with an ethereal girl that gives him a feather as a symbol of that love and that despite many years passing, that love does not wither. The boy keeps the feather in the hope of finding that girl again one day. The dreams described the realities that each one of them experienced in their worlds. The boy was always trying to find that ... girl and on the other hand, she was waiting for him in eternal solitude. In the end, in a very metaphorical way, an elderly man reunites with the girl and gives her back the feather, I think it is an excellent representation of what death is, for me it was very beautiful.
I want to highlight the art of this work, despite the fact that it is a sequence of images and not an animation, each image is pure art, handmade and with very small details that feed into the story, it was what I liked most of all.