I’ve watched “Shelter” a few days back.
While I was impressed by the overall storytelling and animation, I really liked the style behind it. Scenes were colorful and everchanging, a real eye-candy… Yet I didn’t like the music part. It felt completely alien to me. To the point, where it actually hindered me while I was watching this short movie.
I won’t say that even the story itself was especially deep, but it was nicely represented. Feeling of the girl were leaking from the scenes. Her anxiety felt almost real to the point where you can feel it yourself… And then again, music was a boomer. I don’t really want to say anything bad about it, but it felt just wrong.
I won’t really connect “Shelter” to any of Key’s works… It didn’t feel Key-ish for me. And that was good, actually. Because it didn’t feel plagiated or anything.
Just something that is really nice to watch once in a while.
7/10 for me. Would watch again, wouldn’t listen though.
I’m a fan of Porter and Madeon’s music but wasn’t expecting much from this. Ended up tearing up by the end, which I was not expecting. Very impactful short. The art and animation (the visual front of the short film) was simply beautiful, they really outdid themselves with the virtual reality world and the ending of the world. The quick sequence changes were very well-timed and executed, flowing from one scene to the next perfectly. The flashbacks, holy shit, way to go and bloody well crush my heart and make me just lay down not knowing what to do next with tears flowing from my eyes. Music and lyrics perfectly suited the visual front and story I found, probably my favourite song from Porter and Madeon yet (although haven’t listened to their older songs in a while).
Interesting note: Porter got his inspiration from AnoHana it seems and is a massive fan of the series, one of the main reasons he wanted A-1 Pictures to animate this. Although he wasn’t able to get the same staff members (although he got the character designer he wanted, who is best known for the character designs of Idolm@ster), I’m sure he’s very pleased with what they did, the staff members perfectly executed this 6 minute short film/music video in my opinion. Also I feel like this will get a few more people interested in anime.
This scene completely rekt me:
Some of the beautiful art and animation:
Unrelated to Shelter, but since we are on the topic of short films/trailers/music videos, I thought I’d share another one of my favourites. This one’s by HoneyWorks.
EDIT: Just realized that the ending is a bit deceptive. When he says “I got her”, he means that he triumphed over the other guy in the end. It does NOT mean that he’s bringing her back to the other guy.
So I’m joining late, but I finally watched Shelter yesterday.
I was already a bit biased by having heard very good critiques about it, but it still held up to the expectations. The art and animation used was simply astonishing, and the song is just as amazing. I really liked how they combined both static very detailed backgrounds with very smooth animations and different camera angles throughout the entirety of the short-film.
The only thing I didn’t like was that even though it gave a very emotional sad vibe in its ending, the overall story of the short-film seemed rather empty, with little background to the characters (although I understand that this is extremely difficult to achieve in a 6-minute clip). It felt like I knew what they were going for, I got a part of it, but the effect wasn’t as big as it could have been.
I would have rather had some narration lines in there and, instead of having this version of the song, an instrumental one would still be great.
Overall, I really liked this short-film and, even though I had some minor concerns with the depth of the story, the overall feeling it left me with made up for it.
Overall I’d give this an 8/10
On a side note, just like @Khsellhu, it didn’t feel Key-ish to me. In my opinion, what makes something look like KEY is the character depth and psychological development, coped with a story with sad plot-twists. The short however, failed to deliver the former one, so it didn’t leave that impression on me.
Also, on the topic of whether Rin was abandoned to her fate or her ship was headed somewhere, looking carefully at the video I didn’t see any specific plotted trajectory, so pretty much everything and anything could be possible. She could perfectly be sitting in a stable solar orbit, waiting for someone to retrieve her. Another option is that she is headed to another planet with atmosphere (this is inspired by the rounded nose of the airship, perfect for deviating heat away from the spaceship during reentry). However, in this latter scenario, I wonder about what’s she gonna do alone.
Another major concern is how much time she has left. Air isn’t infinite, and a human needs around 50 tones of food to live around 70 years. Supposing that the food that she is going to need is 10 tones (due to it being 100% digerible and her not moving a whole lot). That’s an awful lot of weight for a spaceship of that size, considering that it also carries an engine, fuel and avionics. Taking all this into account, I’d say that she doesn’t have much time left, and that she is either heading to a habitable planet (and then go guess what she can do there) or that she is stationed in a solar orbit (and she will eventually die. I think this option is more likely).
You could argue that society has advanced a lot, but if she was left out being the child of an engineer capable of creating a ship like that, I don’t think that humanity ever created a scape plan. Humanity together could have created a mothership to go colonize another planet with the technology they had at that point, but if they didn’t then it was probably because:
- They didn’t know how to implement hibernation.
- They didn’t know any habitable planet.
- They were too stubborn to collaborate with each other (I don’t think this is the case).
- They didn’t have enough time to build something like that.
Anyway, my point is that I speculate that she was left to die. Why do that then? Well, probably her father felt like that was the best for her. At least she’d get to live longer in a world she could create to her liking. She would feel lonely but she’d get over it and still find the positive things she had.
What I think the video wanted to show was basically the message of moving on accepting what happened. I also think that it shows how one shouldn’t be angry of being left alive and stranded alone when the one who did it had to choose between letting you die or that.
To be honest, I couldn’t think of many other things, and although @bionic’s interpretation of it being “internet world life” and “real world life” was quite interesting, I don’t entirely see it being the point of this short-film, which, in my opinion, went for a more emotional and impactful approach (animation, audio and art) rather than a deep and meaningful one.
Once again, I really liked Shelter.
PS: @EternalSympathy, go for that Piano cover. You’ve got skills. On a side note, I don’t mind turning this topic into a general animation short-film topic.
I think its theme is presented rather weakly, given how the character[spoiler] Is STILL trapped in her virtual reality and is STILL all alone. She is literally trapped in a stasis, unable to move on. This applies literally in the fact that she’s asleep and figuratively in that nothing is presented that hints that she is going to triumph over her pain. She says that her memories make here stronger, but I can’t help but wonder what that means for her.
For Riki in Little Busters, it meant the strength to take action for yourself.
But for Rin, there are no actions she can take save for those limited by her simulated world, boundaries that were present at the start. [/spoiler]
I will say though, I loved the visuals of the video. I also found the collaboration between Porter Robinson and A1 something inspiring in itself (my understanding is that Madeon did not participate in the production of the animated video). I like the premise of the story, even if its resolution left me a little disappointed.
@Takafumi I believe we may be seeing Rin at different stages of life, and not particularly in chronological order, not just the explicit timeframe of the planetary collision. But I’d have to check the consistency in Rin’s height to verify.
I believe the story was pitched by Porter, so that might explain the flawed narrative. It’s hard to write a concise story over the span of 6 minutes, and if he’s not a writer there are bounds to be flaws.
It’s funny that you mention Madeon being a possible cause of Shelter falling short of Sad Machine in your views. Personally, I love Madeon, and I like his style a lot more than Porter’s. Sad machine might be great but only, I’d say about half, the songs in Worlds EP are ones that I find enjoyable (of course this is my opinion).
In contrast, there isn’t a single song in Madeon’s Adventure album that I don’t like.
Have you listened to Pixel Empire by Madeon? Beautiful stuff.
Anyways, cheers.
