DESCRIPTION

REVIEWS

• 

  Skymine

  50/100
  The perfect filler for your anime list

  (This review contains unmarked spoilers - if there could ever be spoilers for such a thing)

  Ai (Love) is a 2012 ONA that is perhaps most famous because of its length. Let's first talk about the elephant in the room: Ai is 7 seconds long. Which means that...
  ...this anime is so short you could watch it several times in the time it takes you to read this review,
  ...this anime is so short you could watch it approximately 210840 times in the time it takes you to watch all of One Piece at the time of writing,
  ...this anime is so short that even taking the decision of watching it takes longer than actually watching it,
  ...this anime is so short that even element nihonium outlives it (how ironic)

  I could go on, but you get the point.

  Now, let's examine what happens in these 7 important seconds. We are presented with a shot of a person, dressed in blue, seemingly struggling against something. As time passes, the shot gets more blurry and distorted, while it gradually fades to black.

  What a brilliant reflection on love! The person struggling clearly reflects the constant struggle that love is - even if it is requited, as commiting to a healthy relationship requires a great degree of personal effort and maturity. The progressive distortion of the image symbolizes how problems eventually pile up as things settle down in a relationship, after an initial honeymoon phase in which everything seemed fine and perfect. The fade to black is a constant reminder that time is slowly fading our lives away, and thus we have limited time to fix our issues before death comes to knock our doors.

  All of these metaphors are, of course, nothing but a useless distraction from Ai's true purpose. See, Ai has a collection of unique traits that makes it the perfect filler for your anime list, making you seem more anime-experienced than you actually are. Of course, its length is a great advantage - after 7 seconds, you're done, and you can already add it to your anime list. This way, you don't waste your time watching something like Mars of Destruction. But, furthermore, Ai has no sound or dialogue, so you can literally watch it anywhere your internet connection allows without bothering the people around you. Since Ai consists of a single camera shot, you could even add it to your list after just looking at the image in its Anilist page - after all, that's all there is to it (for 7 seconds). And unlike, say, Takena Nagao's short ONAs, Ai is devoid of any shocking or offensive content, or of any impact whatsoever in its audience.

  Veredict: 5/10. Ai has a unique, very specialized role as a perfect filler for your anime list. Too bad it can't possibly serve any other purpose.

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• 

  Golunadi

  4/100
  A POV romance murder mystery

  Ai is a 2012 ONA by Rapparu; it consists of a 7-second camera shot of a person struggling and shaking as they grapple with something. The person is dressed in light blue/grey and has long black hair. They also have a look of sheer determination and concentration on their face. To the left of the screen is a clearly defined hand, and to the right is a blurred hand.

  This person appears to be grappling with someone. Perhaps we are seeing this person struggle with love itself as they shake and the look on their face scrunches up. Alternatively, perhaps the actual theme behind this short 7-second animation is murder. This animation is a POV of the last 7 seconds of someone's life, which is why the expressions on the person's face change as they squeeze harder, and then it all fades to black. Perhaps this is a person killing someone for love, whether it be a romantic rival or out of jealousy. "If I cannot have you, then no one can" situation.

  To rate this animation is relatively easy. Ai lacks sound, voice actors, and music and hardly has any animation, characters, narrative, or clearly defined genre. It is too short to elicit any emotional response from the audience.

  1. Characters 1/10

  It gets the bare minimum for characters, as we see one singular character.

  2. Narrative 0/10

  For narrative, it gets 0, as there is no narrative in place. We can only think of metaphors and find ways to believe this animation has a deeper meaning.

  3.Art 2/10

  As far as art goes, there are pieces of animation listed on this site with art worse than this, so it gets a 2.

  4.Animation 1/10

  The animation is almost nonexistent, yet this is still an animation, so it gets a minimum of 1.

  5.Music 0/10

  There is no audio, so this category is N/A.

  6.Sound Effects 0/10

  There is no audio, so this category is N/A.

  7.Voice Acting 0/10

  There is no audio, so this category is N/A

  8.Pacing 0/10

  There is no narrative or drive behind the character's intention. No story to drive a plot means there is no story and thus no pacing.

  9.Genre 0/10

  While it is marked romance because of the name, we cannot assess if there is a genre to this at all. With this 7-second clip, there is very little to go off of

  10.Enjoyment/Emotional Effect 0/10

  This animation elicited no kind of enjoyment or emotional effect.

  Ai means love in Japanese, and so this has been labelled a romance anime. In Japanese, both "ai （愛）" and "koi （恋）" can be roughly translated as "love" in English. The main difference between ai and koi is that ai 愛 is about "feelings of love" while koi 恋 is about "romantic love." However, it is too short of constituting a romance or even having the most pertinent aspects of marking.

  "Ai" may be a short animation showing us a POV of a person's last 7 seconds alive. The character strangles us, the viewer, as they struggle with their inner conflicts and emotions as it all fades to black for us. Only questions remain. Why did that person choose to strangle the other one? Why was it from a POV angle? What metaphors can we attach to this media piece to make sense of it? This animation could be a metaphor for fleeting love; if we do not look after it, love will die. Perhaps life is too short, and we must embrace love before death embraces us.

  Please give it a watch, and try to make sense of it; it is only 7 seconds.

  0.4/10
  -G

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