Hito’s concept could easily be stretched to a feature film, I feel. It’s glitchy, cyberpunk sensibilities mesh so nicely with its setting, which it drip feeds information about through interesting background visuals and audio. Jani makes for an interesting - if mostly static - protagonist purely because of how stone-faced she is throughout most of the film, barely reacting the weird around her because, for the most part, to her it isn’t weird. Kiefer, the catfish, is the weirdest thing in her life and opens her eyes to the horrors that the world around her is trying to suppress by altering her memories and filling her head with comforting ideas and stories. The presentation of it is gleefully anarchistic, taking full advantage of digital animation, extreme colour grading, and beautiful mixed media. The artifice of it all makes for a wonderfully surreal watch.
Hito’s concept could easily be stretched to a feature film, I feel. It’s glitchy, cyberpunk sensibilities mesh so nicely with its setting, which it drip feeds information about through interesting background visuals and audio. Jani makes for an interesting - if mostly static - protagonist purely because of how stone-faced she is throughout most of the film, barely reacting the weird around her because, for the most part, to her it isn’t weird. Kiefer, the catfish, is the weirdest thing in her life and opens her eyes to the horrors that the world around her is trying to suppress by altering her memories and filling her head with comforting ideas and stories. The presentation of it is gleefully anarchistic, taking full advantage of digital animation, extreme colour grading, and beautiful mixed media. The artifice of it all makes for a wonderfully surreal watch.
