Hanako

The story is about a nameless boy who takes interest of a mysterious girl name Hanako. As the name implies, The name of the anime, Hanako is about Hanako. The art style reminds me of Ping Pong the animation as the the characters and setting are drawn very loose and fluid. Same can be said about its animation. The anime is complimented with lighthearted piano music in order to convey and betray the tone of the anime. For an indie animation, this honestly caught me by surprised. Without going into spoilers, this anime is not meant to make any sense narratively. It's meant to impactyou within a short time frame. And for an indie animation, I think it does a great job of doing that.

A rather interesting short, Hanako wasn't what I expected it to be based on the first minute, that's for sure. There is a very rough feel to the anime which in my opinion works well with the overall feeling of the short. Watching it feels like you are watching someone's confession. I read somewhere that it was all done by one person however I am unsure how true that is. It definitely feels like an intimate experience. I am unsure if there is any deeper meaning to the story at all, if there is then it totally went over my head. While it does not startoff especially disturbing it gets more disturbing as it progresses and really I think one of the main factors in that and one of the greatest aspects of this short in general is the music. The piano does a great job of capturing the mood of what is being shown on screen. The speech in this anime is clearly recorded on a cheap microphone but in my opinion this adds to the intimate confession vibe the short captures. I don't fully understand ever aspect of the story, especially the part around a minute in, it may be that it is intentionally left up to interpretation, but I'm not sure. As I said, I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a deeper meaning to the story but I do think it captures the disturbing vibe very well. Hell, it's only four minutes, I say give it a watch.

Won't really tell much about the story, since it's only 4 minutes long it feels like any major information would be a spoiler. This feels like a small passion project of one person. The animation is rough but colorful and full of uniqueness, it's not very smooth but it gets the job done. Story is fairly straightforward but lacks any sort of substance. It's supposed to be some sort of a ghost story but it feels kinda pointless. The whole thing is made up on a single premise and then a shocking event that acts as the plot point of the story. The ending issorta confusing, we don't know if it's before or after the events, we don't know if they are dead or alive and we don't know their motivations behind their actions. The sound in this is very bad. The music is fine and fits the theme especially in the climax but the voice over quality is really bad. It sounds like someone recorded it on their headset microphone which they probably did. But overall when you view this as a passion project of one person it's fairly okay, there's potential and the animation is really the only thing that stands out. As a work of maybe an art student or someone with great passion I think it holds up pretty well. 6/10