Pale Cocoon

Yawn. Total waste of time. The visuals are pretty, with smooth and life-like animation as well as pleasing character designs. It also showcases some cool-looking futuristic archival technology. However, while better than average, the visuals are not groundbreaking -- easily surpassed by 5cm Per Second and its ilk. They are also repetitive. Plot is thin, derivative and not particularly well presented. The characters are unengaging and underdeveloped. Dialogue and soundtrack are forgettable. Moreover, the pacing is self-indulgently, navel-gazingly slow, making this piece boring despite its short duration.

===== Story ===== “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.” -Buddah The audience opens their eyes to a set of wrought iron stairs, coiling about a brilliant pillar of golden light. It illuminates the dreary recesses of this world, the rusting iron, the sluggish gait of the excavators leaving their cubicles. This is the fate of mankind, stuffed into the interiors of the planet because the surface has rotted away from overpopulation. At least it’s not global warming that dooms us, Pale Cacoon predicts it’s a lack of protection.My fascination was pulled into the dank crypt of Ura and Riko, the two leads, as Pale Cocoon toys with many concepts. Environmentalism and population pollution are obvious themes but only scratch the surface. More interestingly, the narrative asks whether the past is on any use when there is no escape from your present? The theme is expanded as the characters are asked to question their reality and prove to themselves the sky of once-upon-a-time is truly gone. It’s ambitious, aiming for annals of philosophical abstraction even with its twenty-three minute scope. It’s grand but it has a humble foundation; Most of the story is driven by the interaction of Ura and Riko and their diverging opinions on the archaeology of history. Their friendship is both unnatural and snug, a love-hate push and pull that’s intriguing and advances the plot. It’s the small nuances of this relationship that make Pale Cocoon a moving experience, and the revelations of the final minutes that make it phenomenal. ===== Art ===== Dilapidated never looked so pretty. Seamlessly integrated CGI and artwork come together to form a visual masterpiece. Lines are clear and crisp, serving as frames for the cell shaded images. These set pieces are filled in with an appropriately post-apocalyptic palette. Soiled browns and sooty grays swathed in the pale light of computer screens. Swashes of neon green burn dimly in the underground bunkers as the workers return with their zombie-like strut. It’s a mechanical world that inspires both sadness from its poor condition and awe from the technical beauty the artist took effort in creating. ===== Sound ===== Both grand and haunting, the soundtrack for Pale Cocoon is exceptional. It draws from different genres, a classical back bone of pianos and violins, layered by electronic horns. It even delves into Pop, a guest appearance by Little Moa, who solos a powerful ballad. The voice acting is just as impressive; Ura’s delivery devoid of most emotion while Kiko’s inflections delivers insight into her sorrow. Like the rest of the film the sound is handled spectacularly. ===== Characters ===== From such a short film you can’t expect much development, but the two leads Ura and Kiko have surprising depth. Ura is an excavator, swimming through seas of binary code day by day to figure out the world that was. He’s passionate, teetering on the edge of obsession when it comes to the past, tirelessly trudging through the 0s and 1s, saving what he finds interesting. But he is curiously detached from Riko, the analyzer, a friend of his. Riko has stopped showing up to work favoring the bleak company of emptied stairs. She sprawls herself across the grate looking up into the dark retreat, pondering. The anagnorisis of both characters not only speaks volumes about each of them but the world they are living in. In the brief time we see their conceptions of the world change, Ura finally maturing and Kiko gaining a bit of optimism. ===== Overall. ===== Pale Cocoon brings together excellent storytelling and production to create a miniature gem. Its easy to get lost and not realize that the program is over. It deserves a watch by any fan that believes anime should be more than entertainment but art. Pale Cocoon does what most animation doesn’t: provoke my imagination. Just as Riko gazed up into shadows I was left contemplating my dimmed screen.

[This review contains a few minor spoilers] The OVA has a fairly straightforward message: that Earth and its beauty is irreplaceable, even by the most advanced of technologies. In the dark, gray world the characters live in, the only faint resemblance to earth among all the steel is a color -- green. The characters keep going down the levels of their own world to live closer to a fake green - the "ocean" -, yet all they ever do is lose themselves even more amid all the machinery. In the end, when one of the characters finally gets to see something natural he realizes just howlittle he knows about what the world used to be. His very own definition of natural is changed, the last word of the OVA echoing that thought. Theme-wise it is an interesting OVA, but a good theme alone does not make a great anime. Taking care of our planet and home being irreplaceable are things that have been talked about for decades and using a grim tone to approach the subject seems self-contradictory. Instead of celebrating the life of the celestial body we inhabit, the OVA decides to persist on the idea of human stupidity and irresponsibility. It paints humans as undeserving of the perfect Earth, turning the relationship between them and the environment something almost divine-like in its depiction. The case can be also made that showing human failure and sorrow makes the point more memorable, so how much someone likes or dislikes the OVAs take on the issue it presents will be up to personal preference. All that being said, whether I agree or not with what the anime presented does not make the way it presented it any less good. Pale Cocoon is very dull and claustrophobic, but that was its purpose all along. The animation does a good job of creating those feelings when the music does just as good of a job undermining the entire work. On the flip side, the same thing which makes it good also makes it bad when we are presented with CG that often times feels to be in all the wrong places (for example, when the screen pans over CG wires laid over a CG desk). Yet, once again, despite the shortcomings of the animation, the music is the only truly awful aspect of it, with a song towards the end of Pale Cocoon serving as the lowest point of a mediocre score that makes itself far too noticeable. Pale Cocoon is a good watch for the people who don't mind meaning over enjoyment, but unfortunately I'm not one of those people. Although it does feel like almost everything in it serves a purpose, it is one of the least enjoyable things I've watched in a long time, and therefore not worthy of a rewatch, regardless of how well it may explore a theme or how many hidden meanings it may have.

Pale cocoon is an anime short film about an unlucky generation living in an artificial colony below earth’s surface after its inevitable demise brought upon by possible pollution, possible war and maybe other devastating factors. Our main protagonist Ura is an excavator who recovers lost archives containing facts including: images, audio and video footage from the beautiful world where humanity once existed. He is the last excavator as the rest of them (including our female lead Riko) had been disgusted by how their ancestors came to destroy that beautiful world and decided against digging up more facts as it would only sadden them further. Uraone day uncovers an archive that could change his perception of the world forever. Pale cocoon is a good example of where humanity could be heading in the near-distant future with the continuation of war, high levels of pollution and over population. Ura one of the last excavators to remain recovering the lost archives and most likely the last human in this colony to still be enthusiastic about uncovering those lost facts. Ura goes through the daily motion of uncovering new archives containing things such as photos of animals and green land, his friend Riko who gives her thoughts that recovering lost information was a stupid thing for them to do. The two have conflicted opinions as Ura believes there is still hope that the world will be restored to what it once was. Whilst Riko has excepted mankind’s fate of being destructive leading their generation to the life of the underground colony. Ura and Riko are the only two main characters and get good development in such a short time as the movie comes to a climax they both have their thoughts and feelings about the world and state that mankind has gotten themselves into changed drastically. As Ura has learned that the world is not what he had hoped it to be “its blue” (Ura had hoped that there would still be parts of earth with green land, such as fields with cattle). Riko had given up on mankind and believed that they would never redeem themselves, but she later discovers that in the midst of the destruction that there is always a glimmer of hope. Their personalities are very conflicting and it’s surprising that they can be friends despite their differences on the state of humanity. The style of pale cocoon can be comparable to the work of Makoto Shinkai. As the character designs were very plain and simple but the background looks stunning. As I said previously it’s very much like the works of Makoto Shinkai. The sound is very futuristic and sweet throughout, its not the greatest OST but is good nevertheless. The downside of this short anime film is that there isn't enough time to elaborate on the story, such as how this generation managed to get forced into an underground facility. Was it pollution that caused it? Was it war? I would like to have known the specific reason for them all living underground. I didn't fully understand what Ura was thinking after he saw the video, did he conform with the rest and have hatred for the current generations new life underground? and was he going to stop digging up archives and acknowledge that the world may never be what it once was? A few things I would have liked to know for certain, but it doesn't take away much from how good this movie was. This anime short was very good telling of humanity’s downfall and the state that the next generation were left in, the story is very straightforward with two contrasting opinions on the earth and the future of humanity, followed by their eyes being opened to knew information found in archives. The animation is very good but character designs could have been majorly improved. This work is very similar to the likes of Makoto Shinkai and maybe that’s what the creator attempted to mirror the anime around. He did a great job of this anime short and I would give this a definite recommendation to the fans of post-apocalyptic and science fiction genres. Thanks for reading, have a good day/night.

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