Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Short Peace Blu-ray Movie Review

Long on design.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 5, 2014

Katsuhiro Otomo—you’ve created arguably the single most influential anime of all time, Akira. What are you going to do now?”

Of course, there usually aren’t “post-game” interviews with iconic anime and manga artists that seek to promote a certain mouse filled amusement park, but Otomo’s legendary reputation is a big part of Short Peace’s marketing push. This fascinating, if necessarily kind of hodgepodge, compilation of, yes, short animated projects includes one by Otomo himself, but he also served as the guiding force behind the project, bringing together a handful of disparate animators to create an eye popping and occasionally even thought provoking assemblage of material. Short Peace begins with a brief homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, with a young girl getting sucked down a kind of virtual rabbit hole, one where all sorts of wonders await (this segment may be one of the links to a simultaneously released videogame, but since I have neither seen nor played the game, I can’t state for certain). After this odd but charming prelude, four shorts of various lengths then simply follow each other. There’s next to no linking material, other than a reliance on Japanese folklore and myth for at least a couple of the entries.

Possessions

Though Katsuhiro Otomo may be the so-called “marquee name” drawing the curious to this enterprise, Possessions is the short that many fans will want to see, courtesy of its recent Academy Award nomination. This fascinating though rather brief piece details the adventures of an intinerant traveler through a dense Japanese forest who stumbles on what looks like an abandoned shrine. Seeking refuge from a storm, the traveler manages to get inside, where he’s confronted by all sorts of animated (as in living) objects. This traveler, who may be a ronin, begins to interact with the items, repairing a bunch of torn and tattered parasols and later other mundane objects like bowls and even a silk screen printing of a geisha on a wall. There’s a magical frog that hops in and out of the structure, seeming to lament a society that simply tosses beautiful items like these away after having used them once or twice. The subtle ecological subtext will probably not seem that screed like to most, for Possessions is simply a visual marvel, combining styles that evoke ancient Japanese art forms and a contemporary anime aesthetic.

Combustible

This piece is the one written and directed by Otomo, and it’s a kind of Edo version of Romeo and Juliet, albeit with a conflagration in the place of sword fights and poison. Two kids grow up as neighbors and fall in love, though the boy gets disowned when he simultaneously has himself tattooed and then joins the fire brigade. When the girl is forced into an arranged marriage, the only way she can think of to see her erstwhile lover is to start a fire. That she does, in rather spectacular fashion, leading to an apocalyptic disaster. This short is probably a triumph of style over substance. The doomed lover aspect is a bit flimsy to begin with, and frankly Otomo doesn’t do much with it other than set up the amazing pyrotechnics that ensue. But from a purely aesthetic standpoint, this piece is an absolute marvel. Otomo evokes ancient Japanese block art, with subtly dancing flames and a variety of interlocking, almost M.C. Escher-esque, patterns. Filled with gorgeous red and orange tones, Combustible is one of Otomo’s most visually impressive works, which is of course saying quite a bit.

Gambo

This is probably the closest thing to an out and out folktale in Short Peace. On its surface, Gambo relates the devastation of a Japanese village by a huge horned demon, but there’s a very interesting religious subtext here for those who choose to look for it, highlighted by a passing reference to Christianity that may in fact hint at the incursion of that “foreign” belief into the wilds of Japan. A little girl is told to pray for a savior of sorts, and her prayers are answered when a gigantic polar bear shows up to engage the demon in a fight to the death. The animation style here is very interesting, completely different from both Possessions and Combustible. Here, there’s a kind of colored pencil aesthetic, one which is overlaid with a grainy, somewhat distressed looking, vibe. Despite the fire of Combustible and the alien incursion of A Farewell to Weapons (see below), this is easily the most violent and bloodiest of the four shorts in Short Peace.

A Farewell to Weapons

This is the longest and ostensibly most developed of the quartet of shorts on display in Short Peace, and it’s also based on a manga by Otomo himself. That said, A Farewell to Weapons feels like one extended battle sequence from a much longer piece, and therefore has a somewhat detached, uninvolving air about it. We see a crew of futuristic soldiers tooling through a devastated urban cityscape as they hunt for some kind of alien attacking weapon. And that’s basically it. While we get the typical bantering camaraderie between the guys, none of these characters is really ever fully delineated enough to make much of an impression. That leaves the visuals, which are suitably impressive, to stir up interest. This short may in fact appeal most to videogame aficionados, who are used to joining in at a moment’s notice without caring much about what went before or will come after.

Note: While this has nothing to do with the actual content of the Blu-ray per se, my hunch is collectors who love slipcovers will be upset by the fact that whoever packaged this product chose to tape both the bottom and top of the slip to the actual Blu-ray keepcase inside. I found it impossible to remove the tape without badly damaging the slipcover.

Short Peace Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Short Peace is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. (It may appear that Combustible is in a wider aspect ratio, but closer examination reveals that the supposed letterboxes are in fact subtly changing graphical elements that resemble old wood block carvings). This is one stunning looking set of animated features, filled with bright, vivid colors, gorgeously sharp and distinct line detail, and just an amazing variety of styles and techniques. It's a bit hard to discuss qualities like "sharpness" since each of the animating teams is going for different stylistic qualities. But taking the wide variety of styles and techniques in stride, the good news here is that there are no issues like banding, macroblocking or aliasing that show up, offering a really enticing visual experience that should certainly delight animation fans of all stripes, whether or not they're particularly interested in the Japanese idiom.

Short Peace Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Short Peace features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both Japanese and English. None of these shorts is what might be termed dialogue heavy, though A Farewell to Weapons does have quite a bit of walkie talkie contact between the fighting forces. There are great ambient environmental effects, though, from the cloistered environs of the shrine in Possessions to the wide open snowy plains of Gambo. Dialogue (such as it is) and effects are both rendered effortlessly, with good immersive qualities in at least moments of all four shorts (with A Farewell to Weapons probably providing the most traditionally bombastic aural experience).

Short Peace Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Short Peace Trailer (1080p; 1:32)

Note: There are also four collector postcards inside the keepcase.

Short Peace Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Short Peace may not have a whale of a lot of continuity going for it, but each of the shorts is so fascinating in their own regard that any lack of a through line becomes less of an issue than it might otherwise be. While Possessions will be the go-to piece for Oscar junkies, Otomo's own beautiful contribution (which was short-listed for the Oscars itself) and the charming (if violent) Gambo provide brilliant examples of style supporting good storytelling techniques. A Farewell to Weapons is admittedly exciting, but feels like the most trite of the four here, something exacerbated by the fact that it also feels like it's been lifted whole cloth from another, longer and more developed, property. On the whole though, Short Peace is a thrilling compilation and boasts solid technical merits. Highly recommended.