Modest Heroes, 7/10
This is a 53-minute, three-film short anthology by Studio Ponoc, which was formed by Studio Ghibli alumni in the 2010s.
The first one, Kanini and Kanono, is about a family of miniature people (about pinkie-size) living at the bottom of a stream. The two siblings get separated from their father and go out in search of him. What makes it interesting is that there's basically no dialogue: the only thing the characters say are their names and a couple of other words, whose meaning you can infer from the context. It's quite beautiful-looking, the music is nice and there's some interesting playing with the scale of things: descending from the top of a medium-sized rock becomes a precarious drop, and a common stork becomes something akin to an eldritch horror. There's only so much you can ask from a 17-minute short, but it was pretty good. The thing I was left wanting was more playing with the scale: use of depth of field, common everyday objects being involved etc. It was mostly shot in a way where I felt it didn't really make the most of its potential, but otherwise pretty good stuff.
The second one, Life's Not Gonna Lose, is about a kid with a lethally dangerous egg allergy, and all the ways he and his mother have (had) to deal with it. It's a nice slice of life vignette, very beautifully animated in a style similar to Grave of the Fireflies where the outlines are drawn brown instead of black. It gives the story a warm, soft feeling suited for a story centering on a kid. There's not that much to say about it. It feels pretty true to life and it gives its subject matter its due seriousness. There are a couple of interestingly stylized bits of animation, like when the kid accidentally ingests ice cream with eggs in it, and the whole thing goes haywire.
The last one, Invisible, is about an invisible, and also seemingly incorporeal man. As in, he literally has no physical weight or presence: automated doors do not open to him, and he needs to lug around a canister of something to keep him from drifting away. It's quite clearly an allegory for loneliness, social anxiety and the dehumanizing nature of the modern world, and at that it succeeds pretty well in its brief runtime. You really feel for this guy, despite not even knowing his name or even his face. There's nice attention to detail, like how he has to ride his scooter all lopsided because of the canister he lugs around everywhere. It ends a bit abruptly, but makes the most of its premise in its runtime.
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