Pale Cocoon: Living Underground While Archiving A Greener Past
Posted on April 17th, 2007 by calaggie in Anime
Today I watched Pale Cocoon and found it very interesting albeit slow for something that has a duration of 23 minutes. The setup is that it’s the 2600s and a man named Ura works in the Excavation Department, inspecting and restoring visual media from the time when the Earth’s surface was still green. His co-workers, including the somewhat aloof Riko, have grown disinterested in working to preserve and categorize images of things that don’t exist anymore and consider it a waste of time. That is, until an unknown video surfaces in Ura’s workload.
There is an interesting perspective change that occurs when the two main characters finally decipher the context of the video and as Ura decides to explore the surface. The dialogue is minimalistic and the cold imagery and lack of material artifacts convey the seperation that people feel from the once-green past and the general reluctance of people to want to remember those images as such thoughts reinforce the sad reality of the lives they currently live. However, that lack of talking made it slightly boring in a few parts but thankfully the cinematography made me smile and pay attention. Overall, it’s an nice piece of animation that touches on population growth without being preachy and gives some insight into how anthropologists might view our culture 500 years from now.
I can’t state enough how beautifully crisp Pale Cocoon looks – these screenshots don’t do it justice. An AMV made from this anime called “Galaxy Bounce” shows off what I’m talking about and that video is currently involved in a runoff vote in the Video of the Year category of the 2007 Viewers Choice Awards over at AMV.org. I ended up voting for its opponent – a sentimental blend of Haibane Renmei and KimiNozo entitled “Reflections” – but it was a close decision. Many of the videos that made the final nominations across all categories are really good and worth checking out.
Anyway, I am looking forward to the next production by director Yasuhiro Yoshiura and Studio Rikka to blow me away. While writing this post, my mind made a mental connection to Makoto Shinkai and his brilliant CG horizons and I think Yoshiura could do for sci-fi anime features what Shinkai did for romantic stories about lovers seperated by distances but with more variety in the themes involved.
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I still haven’t watched Pale Cocoon yet, but it’s sitting on my Hard Drive waiting for a good day. It’s been interesting how much AMVs have an effect on me. It’s how I got started on RahXephon as well with “Euphoria”.
“Galaxy Bounce” was amazing, so I’d like to see how “Reflections” is better. :P