Birdy shelter notea full#

This combined with Rin’s tragic tale is reminiscent of the crying games of the 2000s that functioned as cheap emotional catharsis for male otaku to feel moe. While Rin’s father’s face is shown in several shots, the way his face is obscured to bring our focus onto young Rin and how all of young Rin’s engagements with the camera are presumed to be from his point of view make these flash backs reminiscent of harem anime and other channels of male self-insert where a nondescript male with dark short hair engages with a cute bishoujo in order to provoke moe. This is her father’s only real motivation that is properly communicated to the audience where we watch an adorable montage of happy bouncing Rin play in sandboxes and color as her father quietly prepares the virtual world for her to live out her life in after earth undergoes an apocalypse, with no regard for young Rin’s feelings or will.

Birdy shelter notea full#

She eventually starts receiving flashbacks to explain how she came to possess her personal world.ĭuring these flashbacks the camera focuses almost entirely on a young elementary school age Rin, full of innocence that must be preserved before it is destroyed. It’s as though she is waiting to be acted upon, which is exactly the case. After creating breathtaking landscapes it’s implied she just deletes them and then goes back to lounging in bed her big pink bed. A little girl consumed by boredom rather than a young woman doing something worthwhile. Despite her, canonically, approaching adulthood her bishoujo design gives her the appearance of a preteen. Rin is not an explorer, an athlete, or even an artist as we see that her tablet drawings are simplistic like that of a child’s. She also spends a lot of time wistfully looking up in general, never addressing the camera or audience.

Instead she wistfully looks up while perched on top of her structures. We don’t see Rin exerting effort to climb or swim the geological feats she creates. Rin is essentially a goddess that creates and destroys mountains and oceans on whim to keep herself entertained. The imagery is reminiscent of Minecraft or even The Sims. This is when the music starts and we watch Rin’s room deteriorate as she miraculously rebuilds a new landscape to explore from her tablet. We learn that this world “belongs” to Rin and she is its sole inhabitant. The bird is beautiful yet sorrowful, an untouchable object that the audience is meant to feel sorry for. An obvious homage to the metaphor of the caged bird, a metaphor that is tirelessly used by male authors to explain the relationship between female characters and their families. Rin awakes in her bedroom, a type of glass terrarium that emphasizes not only how Rin is like a specimen whose life the audience is observing but also represents how she is confined to her “shelter”. We are introduced to her and her inner monologue as she appears to be drowning but then it is revealed that was actually a dream.

However, we don’t learn her name or age from the music video itself. Our main character is Rin, a 17 year old girl. So what’s important is not what the characters say but how their actions and gestures are framed by the camera and convey to us what little backstory exists for what we witness on screen. There’s minimum dialogue since it’s a music video after all. So aside from the derivative premise, I also take issue with how the story is presented. Shelter only represents another bud off of this concept rather than any type of new take. But the premise of a young girl escaping apocalypse via her scientist parents is common enough that Shelter also reminded me of a Japanese game called Firefly Diary. Even if there’s no direct influence, the studio’s staff likely had it fresh on their minds. It’s quite similar to the 2016 anime film Garakowa which was also produced by A-1 Pictures and used bishoujo character designs. Robinson summarized the video on twitter “'shelter the animation’ tells the story of a girl living alone in a simulation built by her father to save her from the end of the world.” But what really makes Shelter memorable for most people is it’s supposive tear-jerking story. Shelter the song works as great accompaniment to what is a beautiful exhibition of animation.

It’s a collaboration between electronic music producer and DJ Porter Robinson and anime studio A-1 Pictures.