It’s hard to be mad at the end of this short film simply because of all the detail that went into the design and the simple but skillful dialogue that doesn’t clutter anything up and is able to work with the story despite how little of it there is. In fact, the bulk of the dialogue doesn’t even come until the young woman that’s the center of the tale is brought down to meet with the supposed big bosses that run her place of business, and when she speaks to the man she admits to loving. There’s something there though, something in his stance and his words that feels evasive to the point of being duplicitous. That’s when the fact that most of what we see is automated in some way becomes a little more ominous, and the world in which this woman lives becomes a little more uncertain. The action she took after noticing an assassin seeking to target someone was to drop a metal salad cup into the window of an apartment below her resting place at the time. There’s a stunning amount of attention to everything that was put into this story, and while the audience can likely tell what’s going on, just another day in the city, it feels that there are quite a few stories to tell throughout this city, more than just the current individual that we’re meant to follow. There’s a giant crab loose in the city for crying out loud, and it’s tough enough and smart enough to foil the attempts of a human being in a giant mech suit, so there’s definitely more to see and more to say about this world. But wanting to know more about the individual who wakes up another young woman in her apartment to give her the couch, then gives her water and something else before going about her day is definitely the most important matter since after a day at work, selling salad cups, she’s approached by a hovering droid that looks like a mobile cash register and instructed to head downwards to see the bosses.
Like something right out of Futurama, her boss is a head floating in a vat of some sort of liquid that apparently can control a speech program with his eye movements, and congratulates her on foiling an assassination attempt earlier in the day. When asked if there’s anything that she wants the young woman answers that she’d like to make a phone call, as the call she tried to make earlier didn’t go through due to a bad connection. This time though the droid is authorized to bring out the ‘big guns’ which sounds kind of ominous to be certain. But this turns out to be a guided missile that seeks out the district where the one she loves is currently staying due to a government project that called him away. As they communicate through the missile, which has crash-landed nose-first in the middle of the encampment where her lover is, it’s kind of evident that he’s a bit nervous while talking to her. But when he announces that he’s coming home and that things are about to get better she’s entirely oblivious, as she’s simply glad to hear that he’s coming back. But if no one else really saw the look on his face, he was holding something back it feels, but what it could have been is hard to say.
The only thing that mattered to the young woman was that she was going to get to see him again, which prompted her to leave her home after getting ready, picking up some food on the way, and then boarding what looked like a shuttle car. A strange thing happened near the end though as she went began to feel dizzy and disoriented at one point. It’s tough to say what happened to her since she didn’t come into contact with anyone prior to the train, as far as anyone knew. The hallucination she encountered, a dark, demonic-looking creature that was seated across the way from her, brought a new level to the film that hadn’t existed yet, but when she finally passed out and was seen on the loading platform, and then in a patch of dirt that was quickly walled up before the credits rolled, it’s fair to say that things had gone terribly wrong. It’d be great to see a follow-up to this, but it might be a while according to the credits. The post-credit scene of the missile still stuck in the ground and giving the old message that many people remember was classic as well. This short film is kind of like an anime brought to live-action with elements of Ready Player One, Futurama, and several other notable titles slammed together. Despite the ending, it works.
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