GARAKOWA - Restore the World

Garakowa -Restore the World- is a 60-minute long animated film directed by Masashi Ishihama and produced by A-1 Pictures. Frankly, what made me watch this film was its relatively short length, so I'll describe its positive and negative aspects.

Positive: (+) The art and animation I guess this is the section most of the budget went to. The backgrounds of this anime were simply gorgeous. The colors and details were amazing. The animation was also smooth and high quality. I didn't especially like the character designs, mostly because I dislike anime with little girls, but objectively speaking, there was nothing wrong with that either.

(+) The soundtrack The soundtrack of this anime was comprised mostly of piano pieces, which fit well in most of the scenes. Overall, I liked the soundtrack a lot.

(+) The concept Despite the flawed execution, the concept of this anime was pretty good. The events happen in a virtual world, where the main characters, who are anti-virus programs, delete corrupt files. Basically, imagine if the agents in Matrix were cute magical girls. I have to admit, the idea wasn't bad at all, but it could have been better, for reasons which I am gonna explain below.

Negative: (-) Everything else Apart from the great art and soundtrack, as well as the concept, the movie fails at pretty much every other department. Despite its short 1-hour length, this movie feels like 2 hours due to the slow pacing and constant information dumping. The characters speak endlessly about the details of their world, but without a proper explanation, everything feels like pseudo- scientific mumbo jumbo. The characters remain mostly under-developed, so you don't really care what happens to them. The action scenes were short, and despite the brilliant animation, you don't really know what's happening, apart from the obvious ugly virus monster vs cute anti- virus girl.

Overall, despite the attempt of doing something unique, this movie ends up being pretty much forgettable and with nothing much to offer apart from the good visuals.