By Andrew Osmond

Garden of Words reminded us that a small anime can be beautiful in all ways; visually gorgeous, emotionally intimate, celebrating the real scenery of Japan. HAL has the same blend, though with an SF element. Like Garden, it’s a self-contained short story, only an hour long, but full of exquisitely-detailed images.

Once more, boy meets girl. But this boy is a robot and he’s been made to look like the girl’s dead boyfriend, to help her through her grief. The setting for their tale is not some future city, but a very old-world Kyoto that’s escaped Blade Runner makeovers. It’s all elegant wooden houses and stone waterways, where people sew and dye by hand. The climax happens during the Gion Matsuri, a centuries-old festival held each July, when giant floats trundle through the city.

HAL’s production studio is famed for another SF anime in an old-fashioned city, one threatened by man-eating giants! Yes, HAL is by the same folks as the anime Attack on Titan. Their studio is WIT, an independent offshoot of Production I.G. In recent years, I.G has used woman artists to add a feminine touch to material once stereotyped as “for boys.” There was CLAMP’s work on the horror Blood-C, for example, and Chica Umino (Honey and Clover) creating character designs for the action-comedy Eden of the East. Continue Reading