Anime: Aru Tabibito no Nikki

I absolutely adored this little gem! It's a fun take on those old, black-and-white silent movies, with a touch of dream-like poetry that reminded me of the movie What Dreams May Come.

I know this was originally released as Shockwave Flash episodes, so that's were the jerkiness of the animation comes from. However, the drawings themselves are amazing, perfectly "imitating" the feeling you get when watching those old, old movies. It's even got the sepia color feel to it :)

The music (piano and French-like accordion tunes) is also a perfect match to this little piece of work, although by itself it's not something you'd listen to all the time. It supports the style, imagery, flow and atmosphere better than anything else I can think of, hence the 10.

The short stories are also pretty interesting, if you like fairytales, poetry and anything out of the ordinary. To me it felt like animated poems, ones that don't really need words to express something. However, don't look for an intrigue or character development. The short stories can be watched as stand-alone episodes and have no links between them.

The imagery is not difficult to understand. It's cute and humorous, just like a wink. Short and fun, this is not something that a hardcore fan of action, romance, fantasy, or sci-fi would instantly fall in love with since it has none of those things in it. The closest thing I've seen that resembles this is Labyrinth from Manie-Manie, or the second episode of Twilight Q. If you like weird and eerie things like those, chances are you'll love this series too. I'd recommend you watch it anyways since it's so short, and free :)

The characters are also an inherent part of this strange fantastic world and its imagery. Tortov Roddle (and his strange pig-like mount) made me think of a mixture of Charlie Chaplin and Don Quijote for some reason. Travelling and observing, he encounters all kinds of strange situations, and instead of being scared or impressed, he just ponders about it in a humoristic and detached way.

Overall, a refreshing, original work that I will surely watch again.

(Btw I believe a score of 5 to be average, not bad)

Note that this "movie" is only 15min long, so unlike "Angel Egg" you won't feel you wasted your day if it turns out not to be to your taste.

I wasn't expecting much and downloaded this simply because it has an unusual pastel-like art style. When watching it I wasn't suddenly grabbed by it, but did find that after about 5min I was drawn into it a fair bit, trying to see if there is some hidden message to it all.

The movie has no dialog, instead using slides between scenes which have the dialog written on them (ala old silent films), all you hear is the music and sounds of the environment.

The movie is made up of many short chapters, each seemingly related to a different dream, and most quite interesting or suprising in some way.

It's an intriguing arty piece that will almost certainly keep your interest for it's short 15min running time, and make you wonder "what's this trying to say" like all good arty things.