Typhoon Noruda (2015)

Just perfect...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

An animated short with sleek animation is nothing new when considering Studio Colorido. But the problem here is that Typhoon Noruda plot was not made to be developed in only twenty and something minutes. It's like you took any of director Mamoru Hosoda films and compressed it to one quarter of its original runtime. The initial ruse between the two boys is never really explored beyond its immediate consequences, even if it hints deeper personal reasons, the sobrenatural threat is never explained beyond the "your world is in danger" to have any impact or sense of urgency, and the characters don't have enough time to broke out from the spectrum of anime cliches. If I said that Azuma is the sad boy with long, brown hair, Saijo is the angry boy with short, dark hair, and Noruda the mysterious "out-of-this-world" girl, I have given you all their characterization in this film. Not that this short is bad. Its animation is good and some of its shots are pretty noteworthy. But it falls short of any bigger impact it seemingly wanted to have. Neither a typhoon or a wind, this short is simply a brief breeze, that will pass thought you without lefting any lasting impression. So, why Sentai Films decided to release it in Blu-ray and even give it its own dub, its beyond me. Funnily enough, when production of Typhoon Noruda was first revealed, it was originally announced as a feature-length film. To fill in time when shown in Japanese theaters, Typhoon Noruda was presented as a double feature together with other short of the studio, "Hinata no Aoshigure". Incredibly, said short-film manages to better developed its unpretentious story and have more exuberant animation in its few 17 minutes, than Typhoon Noruda.

This is okay for a brief "when you have nothing better to do" anime short. But it is all fluff with no substance. There is a story without a plot, no explanation given as to why things are happening or who is at the center of it. As such it feels more like a 28 minutes trailer than an actual feature. Too short for a movie, this has the trappings of a single episode of an anime series... without the series. The animation isn't special, the story is almost non-existent, and the ending fairly unsatisfying. It's like being invited to dinner and fed potato chips as the main course.