Anime: Shelter.

Shelter is a one-off music video, with a concept that needs explanation, but in doing so it is a complete spoiler. So, be aware the review will spoil your viewing, as it gives the interpretation that I thiink makes the most sense.

In the MV, the protagonist is an girl named Rin, and the girl is about 17. We get her name and age only from the blueprints of the ship, which is a single seat spacecraft.

She is, in the final shot, in a pod in space, adrift, asleep, in a virtual reality. That is her reality, and we do not get told how she arrived there. She is plugged in, but asleep.

The balance of the MV is her experiences in a virtual reality, with memories and fantasies woven into the whole.
Only two people appear, and they are her and her father.
The point of the MV is the shelter, and the memories which are due to her father. The memories of her father give her strength to continue, to exist in a lonely place, and in her dream state she can return to her memories as a third person observer, rather than a participant. This allows us to see her remembering her trip to the shrine as a 3-5-7 day participant (at age 3 or 5 is my guess), and to be read to by her father. He is seen working on the schematics for the pod, in a very early stage, so he is quite possibly the maker of the pod.

Now, why does a father make a pod? Is the earth going to be ruined by some unstated calamity? We only see one very odd visual to hint at it, a very large Jupiter type body, large in the sky, which is ominous and incongruous. It is apparently about the size of the moon, but with an atmosphere. And she has been in the pod from age 7 until today, a total of over 2500 days (about 10 years). This means she has been in stasis for 10 years, and the pod is drifting toward her destination.

We do not see her arrive. The point of the MV is to show her memories as her experience, and her dreams as her present reality, as she moves toward a future. She says "thank you," to the father and world she left behind. But we do not see a future for her, not in the MV. It's all past oriented. And as such, it is not a complete story. It has no end, nor is it long enough to show the end. It is designed as a vehicle for the music.

Ratings: THe visuals and art are good. It's cut fast, with a strong visual narrative, and no voice acting. It's narrated by the protagonist. No other voices are heard. It's got a good enough music, but I'd rate the music as less compelling than the visuals. It's lacking any tension, other than wondering how the parts relate.

There is no character development per se. She is nicely designed and moves naturally. No SD or chibi. A few changes of clothing and she grows from a child to a young adult.
Sound stage is small, limited and without evident depth.

It is a short, 6 minutes so it's not a series and I am not going to rate it as anything other than a music video.

The recent flavor of the week is Shelter, a music video that resulted from a passion project. It’s nice to see passion projects coming into fruition but I am not going to give it a pass just for being one. Misty Chronexia is a passion project as well but it’s not exactly something to be thrilled about, is it now?

Shelter is nicely animated, and I am again not going to give it a pass just for that. Pretty colors can go fuck themselves if they are a self-purpose instead of dressing for a good story and well written characters. Something which you will of course not find in a 6 minute music video because of time limitations. Everything is void of content and serves simply as emotional pornography.

There are only two characters in it and we know nothing about them. As for the crumbs we do know about them, they work against the credibility of the whole project if you think about it logically. One is a lobotomized cute girl trapped in a videogame, and the other is her father who loved her so much that he put her there, so she will spend her life alone and miserable. What a great father.

By the way, this is a music video which means the music should be the thing that stands out the most. And guess what, in the contrary it’s easily the weakest part. Completely average and forgettable.

So what we eventually have here is a cute girl doing cute things while escaping reality by playing a videogame all her life. It’s like a love letter to all gamers and hikokomoris out there. The attempt at drama by having a plot is laughable at best since it doesn’t lead anywhere besides creating victimizing for the emotionalfags to be crying over a character with zero personality, just because she is cute. Wanna bet it wouldn’t work if she was a fat middle age man?

Bottom line, it’s not good, it doesn’t deserve the hype, and it’s yet another product of the terrible modern era we are going through.