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This post is by guest writer Max Iorio.
With each passing anime season, there’s always bound to be a particular amount of hype for a handful of different shows. But think about the last time any of the most anticipated shows was an anime short, a show that features episodes that all have shorter lengths than a typical anime. Does anything come to mind?
Despite a fair amount of shorts being released every season, they always seem to be disregarded. A lot of people would much rather watch the “real shows” and don’t bother wasting their time on an episode that doesn’t at least run for half an hour. Somebody might skip a short for a number of reasons; maybe it’s a low budget production or it looks like it’s based around some repetitive gimmick.
While these gripes may be credible, I definitely don’t believe that anime shorts should be skipped out on altogether. A shorter runtime can grant an anime more wiggle room than one might think, especially creatively. It can allow an anime based off of a smaller concept to express itself and show what it has without overstaying its welcome. While some shorts can’t quite keep things interesting enough to run for 12 episodes (one show that comes to mind from recent memory is Pan de Peace!, which is about four schoolgirls who are obsessed with bread), many manage to pull through.
Sekkou Boys
A recent notable example is the entertaining Sekkou Boys, an anime about sculptures of Hermes, Mars, Saint George, and Medici who form an up and coming idol group under the management of a woman who is straight out of art school. Not surprisingly, it isn’t the greatest anime, but it is at least worth a watch — if not just for the concept alone. A great thing about shorts is that they’re very easy to plow through in a single sitting, and an evening spent watching the Rockies on their rise to super-stardom is an evening well spent.
Space Patrol Luluco
A short that is really great though is Trigger’s Space Patrol Luluco. Airing at the same time as Kiznaiver, Luluco obviously wasn’t setup to be a huge success, but it really could have been. With this project, you can tell that Trigger really had a lot of room to do whatever they wanted; the show is paced at a relentlessly breakneck speed, and it’s jam-packed with references and clever jokes all the way through. After her father is frozen solid, Luluco has to unite with the Space Patrol to rescue both her father and the city that her space pirate mother has stolen. But even though all of that is going on, Space Patrol Luluco is more about one’s first love which, believe it or not, is a story Luluco tells just as well as the main plot. Mix in a ton of character, a surprising amount of plot twists, and some of the smoothest animation Trigger has produced to date, and Space Patrol Luluco could be some of the most fun couple of hours you’ll spend watching anime in a while.
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou
But the anime short that I feel is the most underappreciated is Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou. Agetarou is the son of a popular tonkatsu chef, and when he falls in love with DJing, he begins to apply his talents as a tonkatsu chef to his work as a DJ. As weird as it sounds, it’s definitely one of the most oddly entertaining shows I’ve seen in a long time. The art is as unique as each of the eccentric characters, the music is catchy, and it’s just a lot of goofy fun. While it’s really unique, it probably isn’t the show for everybody, but personally Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou is one of my favorite shows from 2016.
I feel that anime shorts often tend to have a lot more energy to them than many full-length shows. Shorts are often more creative, more catchy and fun, and feel more like spirit projects than your typical anime that was just produced so some people somewhere could get a paycheck. And despite all of the things that shorts can provide, they are too often overlooked. I hope that people will learn to come around and appreciate these bite-sized treats alongside their “real shows”. They deserve the recognition, after all.
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