Title: Cencoroll
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi
Publisher: Anime Innovation Tokyo, Aniplex
Original Creator: Atsuya Uki
Director: Atsuya Uki
Producer: Atsuhiro Iwakami, Hiroaki Takeuchi
Script: Atsuyua Uki
Music Composer: supercell
Details are great. I love details. Details help me understand stories and characters as well as make them more interesting to watch. Details are not what Cencoroll is full of. If anything, the opposite is true; the short film seemingly aims to provide its viewers with as few details as possible about both its characters and setting. Admittedly, had the characters been oozing charisma and intrigue, that wouldn’t have been such a major problem… except they don’t, which only serves to add onto the general feelings of boredom that plagued my experience of the movie. From it’s serene sun-rise beginning to its anti-climactic ending, Cencoroll manages to be an ultimately forgettable experience despite its interesting start.
The basic story deals with this guy, Tetsu, his monster-alien thing, Cenco, and a girl named Yuki who accidentally gets involved in the fight between Tetsu and another creature holder, Shuu, over who gets to eat whose creatures. What initially drew me to the story is that it was weird and left me wanting to know more. The more I watched, though, the more I realized that the initial intrigue that drew me into the film had all but disappeared within the first ten minutes. The main problem with the story is that it’s never fully developed. A bunch of events are strung together in order to create what might pass for a plot, but they don’t go much beyond that. There is no back story. There aren’t a lot of explanations. You want to know why these creatures pop up in Japan? Why some people can control them? What the relationship between the monsters and their hosts/masters is? Well, that’s too bad because you never will.
Admittedly, I understand that the plot doesn’t have the time or material that would allow for the majority of my questions to be answered, but the lacking sense of drama and rushed feeling certainly didn’t help Cencoroll, especially since they fostered an empty viewing experience. Adding onto that feeling is the confusion that plagued me throughout the movie as I was constantly left trying to puzzle out why people were doing what they were doing, if creatures like Cenco were commonplace, how all the characters tied together, etc.. Though it’s possible that I’m simply thinking too hard about about an anime that wasn’t aiming to do much, it’s still not a great excuse for the lack of life in the movie. Despite the presence of action and drama, neither really affected the movie, something that can probably, in large part, be attributed to the characters.
Despite their interesting circumstances, the few characters we are introduced to, like the story, turn out to not be particularly interesting themselves. Tetsu, Shuu, and Yuki remain enigmas throughout the course of the anime; we never learn anything about them aside from what could possibly be inferred based on the few conversations they have, and, even then, the information only serves to add to the list of growing questions. Mysterious backgrounds aside, the characters also lack any real personality. Sure, you can characterize Yuki as a curious, somewhat outspoken girl, Tetsu as a moody guy who’s a bit anti-social, and Shuu as somewhat malicious in intent, though we didn’t really see enough of him to even give him to get any proper feel for his intentions or personality beyond the “bad guy.” However, their characteristics are simple and even vague in some instances, creating characters that are not only hard to connect to but also hard to stay interested in. Heck, the most interesting character to watch is probably Cenco who could at least go through cool transformations and absorb people’s arms. When I care more about the monster-alien – the largest enigma in the movie – and see his emotions are more relatable than those of the humans, I think I can safely say something the film failed a bit when it came to its cast.
The animation is probably the most enjoyable aspect of Cencoroll. The simplistic style is slightly reminiscent of the independent animation shorts you sometimes see floating around Youtube. I enjoyed the style, though. The character designs I especially liked, although that doesn’t come as much of a surprise since Atsuya Uki, the main guy behind Cencoroll, also did the character designs for Tsuritama (which I liked a lot visually as well storywise). They’re not as nice as Tsuritama‘s, but they look okay and certainly helped me to enjoy the movie more. I even grew to be a bit fond of Cenco’s design despite his strangely grotesque appearance. I also liked the few fights shown because they brought some excitement to the story, although, they were often short-lived and ended anti-climatically. The animation isn’t the best or even particularly pretty (though it has its moments), but it fits the anime nicely, and I don’t have too many issues with it.
In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Cencoroll turned out to be another example of how not all AMVs accurately depict source material’s quality (surprise, surprise, right?). Sure it looks interesting and cool when it’s combined with some neat music and cut down to include the most interesting bits of the story, but when you sit down to actually watch the thing, the glamor quickly fades away. The characters are dull, the story’s confusing, and the overall experience is underwhelming. As a result, I find that I can’t recommend Cencoroll to anyone. There are far better short watches out there and definitely better series; go out and watch one of those instead.