Japanese Title: Rain Town

 

Similar: La Maison en Petits Cubes (The House of Small Cubes)

 

Watched in: No voice work

Genre: Drama

Length: 10 minutes

 

Positives:

• Charming and sweet.
• Beautiful to look at.

Negatives:

• Not much depth.

I’ll make this quick. Rain Town is about a little who goes outside to play in the rain and meets a robot on the street. They become fast friends, have fun together in the rain, splashing in puddles.

Adorable, that’s how I would summarise Rain Town. The two characters are so cute, yet the damp colour pallet and slow piano create a lonely, forlorn atmosphere, which I liked.

I found this short animation to be more about the audio-visual side than the story. Rain Town is pleasant, but not particularly deep. When you see what Disney and Pixar do in their shorts, this could have pushed further, maybe told us more about the robot and shown more stages in life between the two.

Art – High

Cute children’s storybook art. Nice animations on the characters and rain, but the backgrounds are static, even in times when there should be motion. Not a serious problem, as the rain masks this in most shots.

Sound – High

Beautiful piano to accompany my favourite sound, rain. Great sense of environmental depth in the downpour.

Story – Medium

A sweet story of a girl playing with a robot in the rain. Lacks that certain quality to create a truly memorable short.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: It’s worth ten minutes of your life. You probably could have watched Rain Town in the time it took to read this review. (Watch the official release here, free.)

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Awards: (hover mouse over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: None