PUPARIA

Puparia is a stunningly beautiful short that's well worth your time, all three minutes of it.

The biggest selling point here is the visuals. The art is absolutely god-tier, each frame could be a painting. It has a level of detail and vibrancy that you rarely see in anime. What I appreciated most was that as detailed as it was, it was aiming for something different than hyper-realism - it was very creatively stylised and illustrative. I just loved looking at it, evidenced by the fact that I've seen this short four times already. However, I can see that perhaps some people wouldn't like it since it's definitely different to the typical anime style.

In terms of story, I can't particularly comment a lot - it's a very short anime, it clocks in at around 3 minutes and it has no dialogue. There are several scenes shown in this anime but it's not made clear whether there is any through line or connection between them. There's a certain pensiveness in all the scenes and a sense of fantasy or supernatural in almost all of them but I'm not going to try to discern any deeper meaning or symbolism to try and avoid sounding pretentious.

I was completely transfixed as I watched Puparia. It has a hypnotic quality to it, largely due to the intricacy of the animation and the style of music used. I don't have much to say on the music except that it's fantastic and perfectly fitting for the visuals. Animation doesn't always have to be about complex plots or well-developed characters, that's not what Puparia is trying to do. What it does achieve is beautiful aesthetics, a great atmosphere and a mysterious vibe. The rest of it is up to you.