Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Bensonas
Well well well. What in the name of all that is wonderful have I stumbled upon right here. This has to be the very definition of a hidden gem. The gemiest of gems. What an astonishing piece of work and it's just 23 minutes. I am so so happy I found this. I think it was through a linked actor on here from Patema Inverted. Wow
I'll start with the worst part, the music. Which I'm giving a solid 9/10. It is so incredibly close to a 10 but I just can't let it be as the song at the end of the short film isn't great. Big big big font size 72 however though, the rest is perfect. The music and sound design fit this so perfectly it's like a glove. Hand in hand....in hand with the animation and story. It's like the sound design creates and energy. There is a moment in the first half, at 09:08 that b…
Read at the sourceYardhouse12
Pale Cocoon is a one-off OVA that was directed and written by Yasuhiro Yoshiura. Clocking in at around twenty three minutes, Pale Cocoon resembles a classic scifi short story: Short, sweet, with a nice punch. The setting is a post-apocalyptic future where people are excavating archives about the past world and their decaying life support equipment has forced them to retreat deeper into the massive amount of construction covering the surface of the planet. Since it's so short, it's difficult to say much more without major spoilers. The art style is engaging, the character development is solid, and the pacing is spot on.
Also, the user interfaces of the computer systems used by the researchers are fascinating to watch. A lot of thought went into their design and implementation. And I don't…
Read at the sourceO_T_T
Didn't look like there was a lot of effort, and predictably there weren't a lot of results.
Pale Cocoon is at its best right before it starts. The premise is strong, the synopsis is enticing, but right from the outset the OVA is a huge disappointment. It may even be best to just not watch it at all, and save the idea being dragged down by this result.
In the interest of parity, there are some positives to mention. The OVA has a type of confined brutalist architecture that goes a long way towards setting the tone, and some of the visuals are actually rather memorable, particularly by the end. That being said, and more crucially that being all, its not enough to claw the quality back up.
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Pale Cocoon has a very vague story, in that the actual instigating element doesn't really get de…
Read at the sourceVousz
[This review contains a few minor spoilers]
The OVA has a fairly straightforward message: that Earth and its beauty is irreplaceable, even by the most advanced of technologies. In the dark, gray world the characters live in, the only faint resemblance to earth among all the steel is a color -- green. The characters keep going down the levels of their own world to live closer to a fake green - the "ocean" -, yet all they ever do is lose themselves even more amid all the machinery. In the end, when one of the characters finally gets to see something natural he realizes just how little he knows about what the world used to be. His very own definition of natural is changed, the last word of the OVA echoing that thought.
Theme-wise it is an interesting OVA, but a good theme alone does not mak…
Read at the sourceEmpha
Pale cocoon, set in the year 22XX, presents the viewer with a profound and novel message: “Wouldn’t it suck if earth got ruined and really sucked because we had so many wars?” Real heavy stuff.
Right from the start, it looks cheap. The art is very flat and simplistic, and the movement gets really choppy a few times, especially when panning over the computer screens. The sound isn’t bad overall, but it’s nothing special.
To me, Pale Cocoon is at its best near the middle, when it shows you pictures of our new home and just builds the atmosphere. The music really shines here, but showing the setting doesn’t work well when the setting is both dull by design and drawn in an uninteresting way.
The short ends with a plot twist, but it really doesn’t change anything. The characters aren’t affec…
Read at the sourceHonest_Senpai
Pale cocoon is an anime short film about an unlucky generation living in an artificial colony below earth’s surface after its inevitable demise brought upon by possible pollution, possible war and maybe other devastating factors. Our main protagonist Ura is an excavator who recovers lost archives containing facts including: images, audio and video footage from the beautiful world where humanity once existed. He is the last excavator as the rest of them (including our female lead Riko) had been disgusted by how their ancestors came to destroy that beautiful world and decided against digging up more facts as it would only sadden them further. Ura one day uncovers an archive that could change his perception of the world forever.
Pale cocoon is a good example of where humanity could be headin…
Read at the sourceobtrice
Pale Cocoon might be the best little sci-fi OVA ever made. In just 23 minutes, Yasuhiro Yoshiura does what most fail to do in 23 hours: makes a fascinating and original point, and does it while telling a great story. Many will inevitably compare this to Voices of a Distant Star, another ambitious 20 minute sci-fi film, but unlike its well-known peer Pale Cocoon is far more than flashy production values. This is short storytelling at its finest, and its only fault is leaving you wishing there were more.
At first glance, the film could be interpreted as just another environmental tale of woe. And in part, it is, several times emphasizing that humanity’s deplorable condition is its own doing, the product of run-away population growth and, presumably, global warming. But this environmental po…
Read at the sourceChronologist
Pale Cocoon is a 23-minuite Sci-Fi and kind of mystery short film that deals with some interesting themes, but ultimately comes off as bland and mediocre at best. The visuals are impressive but there's not much else here folks.
The plot is simple – the world got polluted, so they moved everyone to a giant web-like series of structures in order to survive. Ura and Riko work in the archive recovery and analysis departments, and are basically the only two left – their jobs are to go through records of what the surface was like and then analyze them. That’s it – they don’t do anything else other than sit around and talk about society and how pointless they do, or don’t, think their jobs are. Of course, there’s a ‘spark’, something that triggers a real conflict of sorts, but it’s resolved in t…
Read at the sourceangelsreview
The story is slow but it feels like it could happen in our time. They talk of how the world has lost its history because of something devastating and they have to piece threw the small ruminates of the archives in order to learn of the past. In the first part, we are introduced to the man male character and what his job is slowly, though it is still a lot of mystery. It made me want to know more.
The artwork is actually pretty nice, mixing 3D with the drawings well. Sometimes you can’t even tell that there is 3D. The artwork is dark, gray, and rather cold feeling. There really isn’t much to talk about other then that.
The music keeps its strange, slow, sad feeling al the way threw. There is one song that I would so want to have on my player. I won’t tell you what one but you will know…
Read at the sourcemdude009
I have one question I wish to ask you, why are you looking up reviews for this anime? Honestly, it's a single twenty two minute long episode, that's it, there is absolutely no reason to not just go and watch it. But I can't write a review where I tell you to just go watch it yourself without giving you any information (court ordered, it's a long story) so without further ado here's my review of Pale Cocoon:
Story 10/10: The plot of Pale Cocoon is set in a post-apocalyptic world where it is concluded that earth is now a dead world, brown and completely lifeless. Humans all live in an artificially created earth, which at this point is also pretty close to being dead. The main plot revolves around two characters in this near dead facility, they work as archivists working on restoring any inf…
Read at the source_Rika
“The archives we know of as history ended at some point. Before we knew it, humans were living in this world.”
‘Pale Cocoon’ is a poignant account of a distant future when the beautiful earth inhabited by the living has been ruined due to the stupidity of the mankind itself, leading the planet to be barren and uninhabitable, and humans to migrate to a supposedly ‘artificial colony’. The blue sky, the vast tracts of greenery and the flora are nothing more than bitter memories of homeland. On the colony, there is the Excavation Department whose sole purpose of existence is to retrieve digitally recorded information of the planet. Ura, a young man, is a member of the Department who is quite enthused to restore the lost data. On the contrary, Riko is a young woman who has lost all her hopes…
Read at the sourceWillMunny
Yawn. Total waste of time.
The visuals are pretty, with smooth and life-like animation as well as pleasing character designs. It also showcases some cool-looking futuristic archival technology. However, while better than average, the visuals are not groundbreaking -- easily surpassed by 5cm Per Second and its ilk. They are also repetitive.
Plot is thin, derivative and not particularly well presented. The characters are unengaging and underdeveloped. Dialogue and soundtrack are forgettable. Moreover, the pacing is self-indulgently, navel-gazingly slow, making this piece boring despite its short duration.
Read at the sourceLazyness
As I am finishing this anime, I can only feel the sickening sensation of disgust invading my body as I frown upon our future. This near prophetic anime is a true work of art, its beauty is incomparable in its art and its message. a 23 minutes you absolutely want to see, even if you do not agree that it is almost the fate that awaits us.
the story 9/10: pale cocoon offers a deep and complex story that is an absolute must see, it pictures the dilemma of a man having a complex choice to make, satisfy his quest for knowledge of the old world or let the matter rest, since everyone has realized the massacre the humans caused, and move on. It is definitively one of the best spent 23 minutes of my life as it pushed its audience to reflect on the matters at hand.Plus it offers a wonderful plot tw…
Read at the sourceSeabury
I understand that “OMG, this anime is so deep!” Really, I do! I understand that it has a compelling narrative that asks us to ponder slightly more philosophical questions than usual, like what the value of the past is, for example, and what makes it worth revisiting. Our protagonist doesn't know why he enjoys researching the past, but at one point he suspects that it helps him to avoid reality. One fellow archaeologist thinks it's too painful to see what humankind had lost, and to witness the course of human stupidity, thus ends up quitting.
Hmm, our new and talented director is yet another pessimist come from university? Surprise, surprise. I think my synopsis says it all, she can't bear to watch the course of “human stupidity.” It is another smug liberal, bent on thinking that humankin…
Read at the sourcethresholden
Spoilers, read only afterwards.
Theme:
Pale Cocoon is less about environmentalism and more about the preservation of our history and truth. The humans stuck on the terraformed moon gave up the on excavating the ruins of Earth because they thought they could never return to their mother planet. Faced with the past of knowing and understanding that their ancestors ruined themselves and the future, the excavators rather resign themselves to ignorance and forget, only burrowing themselves further downwards rather then accepting the bitter truth and seeking the origins.
The main character refuses to give in to this nihilistic ignorance, he clings desperately to the fading truth as the rest have abandoned it. He is the embodiment of the historian spirit, who uncovers no matter how dire and b…
Read at the sourceSamFury
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Story
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“In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”
-Buddah
The audience opens their eyes to a set of wrought iron stairs, coiling about a brilliant pillar of golden light. It illuminates the dreary recesses of this world, the rusting iron, the sluggish gait of the excavators leaving their cubicles. This is the fate of mankind, stuffed into the interiors of the planet because the surface has rotted away from overpopulation. At least it’s not global warming that dooms us, Pale Cacoon predicts it’s a lack of protection. My fascination was pulled into the dank crypt of Ura and Riko, the two leads, as Pale Cocoon toys with many concepts. Environmentalism and population pollution are obv…
Read at the sourcealchemistnarutoZ
Gorgeous art and beutiful storyline resume the final concept you have of Pale Cocoon.
At the very start i was already amazed by its great animation and draw style. The story is tremendously intresting. The Earth, in a undefined future, is protected from man, now they live under the ground, so the planet can survive. A man and a woman are the main protagonists. They both work on a department designed to research about how the surface was. This department is almost dead, there are only two working there. The empty offices indicate that once, there were many doing this job. Now, our protagonist is the only one that still have any intrest in what the past holds. His friend intends to quit.
I realy liked how the protagonist looked so obssed about descovering the past(wich is our time). It re…
Read at the sourceMunsuta
This anime was well composed. The art was simply amazing and is what made this anime great. It was dark and grungy, I could almost feel the cold wet feeling this anime gave off. Even though it was very short it was very enjoyable and i recommend it to everyone. Dont expect any mechas and explosions with big breasted school girls. Just a very good story with amazing art.
Read at the sourceedgewalker00
even though the animation quality isnt that to boast pale cocoon sure did give its story quite a boot.
taking place on a post-apocalyptic setting, pale cocoon deals with the lives of two humans under the excavation department whose jobs are to excavate old records encoded into software. while this job had some enthusiastic employees early on, it later lost its vigor as one by one, people began resigning. Ura, the only one dedicated in finding out about history decided to go on and unravel the mystery behind one archive. true to what the intro say about this anime, his finding would eventually change the world completely.
the one prominent thing that made this stand out would be the story. it discusses bluntly how humans are ashamed of their existence. how humans are ashamed of what they'…
Read at the sourceElectricSlime
Pale Cocoon tells the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth as observed by two humans, a man and a woman. They are involved in the extraction and cleaning of digital archives left by humans many years before. They include all types of media, pictures of Earth, newspaper clippings, video... the works. They are to a certain extent futuristic archaeologists. The story follows them as they hope to unravel Earth's history. Although short, as one off OVA, it doesn't feel like it is short. If that makes any sense. The plot is nicely developed and reaches an interesting conclusion.
The animation and direction for Pale Cocoon is absolutely amazing. I found myself getting lost in the amazing visuals and rewinding to where I was previously. It is meld between 3-D backdrops and traditional 2-D characters…
Read at the source