When someone at one of the forums I hang out in used a screen cap from this video, I checked it out. It’s a very touching little piece about a bunny boy and kitten girl (neko-style, not furry-style or anthropomorphic) who meet on two sides of a near-invisible glass and strike up a friendship. Make sure you’re logged in to your YouTube account (if you have one), because you’re probably going to want to “favorite” this one.
animation: Mike Inel music: the original was “Cherish” by Ai Otsuk, but was muted by YouTube for copyright. I found an updated on 9/4/2012 featuring new music by Daniel James. There are some minor changes but you can see the original without sound here.
(dedicated by the animator to Doski, his girlfriend–awwww)
If you think too hard about things like “if he can throw the drawing tool over the glass, why can’t one of them get a stepladder” or “how come they can’t hear each other over the glass”, you’ll sadly miss the point of the video, as many of the YouTube commenters did on that first one. (Want to hear something interesting? Between Firefox and WordPress’s own spell check, there is no plural for “commenter”.) I do agree, however, that kitten girl throwing her own arm over instead of bunny boy learning to draw with the other hand is kind of creepy in its cuteness. (However, it took said commenters pointing it out for me to realize that’s what happened. I was thinking fake arm or maybe she ripped off someone else’s arm. Not so cute that last one.)
That all said, it’s a nice little story that I’m sure has symbolism that’s going over my head (symbolism often does, since I’m usually more interested in the story itself than it’s meaning, intended or otherwise). Since it is dedicated to his girlfriend, perhaps it symbolises a long distance relationship or something I wouldn’t know, and there are way too many comments for me to go through them all to see if he responded one way or another on the matter.
Interestingly, it’s the boy character that doesn’t settle for merely touching through glass, but wants to be close to the girl (who is content sitting and writing). Sadly, the wall appears to be regenerating, which unless they’ve just been walking along the wall, and it’s all full of writing and artwork they should have guessed already. I wonder if that says something about the way males and females perceive relationships, but again, symbolism/me are seldom aware of each other. Same with why the boy has bunny ears and the girl has cat ears, but that may be more of missing the point. I don’t think back-story would do anything but mess up the intent here. It’s just a short little cartoon.
Still, I did at least get the connection between the characters, despite the style (or perhaps because of it–he puts a lot of expression between the characters’ faces and ears) and the lack of dialog beyond what’s written on the wall. Thinking too much about it ruins it all. Just relax, and enjoy some beautiful animation that should at least be within reach of your “heartstrings”, if not outright pulling them like a tug-of-war. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to check out the rest of his work. Apparently he’s done some video game work as well as animation.
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