Questions are good things. They are there to get to know others and to find the common ground with each other, with the people we want to love. Well, I would think that the biggest thing I need to learn is to love myself. I think at least. I like lists, I make lists, mainly about anime and manga that I want to read and watch. And sometimes about American books too. My life does revolve around things that I consume. And I do not know if I am fine with that. I would like to fancy myself that I like philosophy, but in truth, I like the idea of philosophy. In the sense, philosophy means the love of knowledge, because we cannot know everything. So we need to start with things that we do not know, even though there are many famous figures in philosophy, I do not want to read from them. Because the biggest thing that I do not know if myself. And, as I am right now, I am more interested in filling the emptiness in me, if that makes sense. But I like questions. So, I went out and looked for que...
Long story short: 5/10 pretty decent and middle of the road.
Music videos come in many forms and shapes and form and animation is one of them. In my opinion, a disappointing animation is worse than a disappointing live-action; even though the focal point of a music video is on the music. The most important thing is clearly the music, the animation here is a kind of bonus experience. I say this because this music video is hard to find on the internet, so I couldn’t re-watch it. (I decided to include "0" because this was between the first short anime music videos that I had watched when I started to watch anime more regularly. And I couldn't leave it without a word.) Because, if this I based my writing on memory alone, and the recounting of other people writing about this animation.
However, understanding the things that go into making a music video is important. While you can judge the animation on of itself, it is needed to be understood that many things go into the production of a music video. The main point here is that the goal is different, and the content and the atmosphere where a music video is born is different than that of a series’ or a film's. Here the animation helps the music, not the music helping the animation and the story.
Sadly, in “0” it is clear that is some sense, the animation was really an afterthought.
"0" is first and foremost a song from singer Kuriyama Chiaki, which was made with the collaboration of la la larks and Minakata Laboratory, and it was developed to be a single and aired 2013. "Kuriyama Chiaki × la la larks × An unprecedented collaboration by Minakata Laboratory is realized here!" Kuriyama Chiaki’s career is amazing, she is not just a singer but an award-winning actor and model. Blood type A, if someone wants to know that. The other collaborator is la la larks, a pop-rock band of five members. And for the animation studio, Minakata Laboratory as it is presented on MyAnimeList, it turns out I am already acquainted with some of their works, I just hadn’t realized yet. And they had made animation for Kenshi Yonezu, which is quite nice.
Kuriyama Chiaki is a multi-talent. In the west we would know her for her role in Kinji Fukasaku’s film, the widely known and loved Battle Royale and she also played Gogo Yubari ins Quentin Tarantino’s film: Kill Bill: Volume 1. Looking over her filmography, it is pretty clear that she is more of an actor than a singer, even though I have no reason to take her accomplishments from her in this field. And it is not like anyone really cares or even remembers “0”. Not everyone can be a winner. And if you can believe in the statistics presented on her Wikipedia page, her music sales went down throughout the years of her releases.
"This music video tells how a shy girl with a secret love and curiosity about what surrounds her works," describes the video description on MyAnimeList.
The video showcases a girl, stuck in her room - not closed away from the world but more like this room is her shelter from the world itself. It is a sort of vague and symbolic representation of starting again. The use of the number in the title is a symbol of restarting from a point in time when we are not pulled down. Zero is a powerful number mainly because there are so many numbers that can come after it, but because there are many numbers behind it, negative numbers. Starting again from zero has a positive connotation that you will try to head towards the positive and away from the negative. Of course with time the symbol is a little bit different. There are no negative numbers in time, time can only move forward so turning back to zero is almost impossible, yet we need to do it if we want to break out from the life we do not want to live. [… “I would describe it as being somewhat a cry "seize the moment" and let go of the past.” - “ProfaneValkyrie”.]
The song’s lyrics are in line with the symbolism of the zero: “White, pure white, completely brand new,/Reduce everything you don’t need to zero.” The rest of the song is pretty one-note, it is about pressure and the dissatisfaction towards the world, and of course the search in for the real you. Even with a bad English translation, the song sounds bland. We heard this and we will hear it more, in the future. The only interesting part is that the one who is singing the song is singing about someone else. This song is a message, not self-reassurance.
One user on AniDB put the best: “The animation is okay, but little happens and the music does not mesh well with the mood of the visuals. It appears to be about a girl who broke up with someone and eventually decides to move on.” - Offkorn.
The past me who actually saw and could put a number to this animation gave it a 5/10, making it an average video. There is no problem with reusing clichés, but there is a problem when it is not remarkable enough to leave an impression.
In a sense “0” had become a zero.
But there is something poetic about it. “Reduce everything you don’t need to zero” is an actually pretty good advice, the more I am thinking about it - it is shallow advice, but it is so surprising that how many people have a hard time with something like this. Our lives get cluttered with stuff that he doesn’t really need and we don’t really want. Maybe “0” something like this, it was unneeded so I had forgotten about it. Because we need things to fill up our life, but if we can take this one quote - because this is what zero actually means - to leave what we don’t need...
Yeah, I realized halfway that I put too much effort into something this meaningless, but in one point, when I actually watched it I rated it a 5/10; so maybe there was something there that warranted a criticism. Or at least mindless babbling about something that had caught my mind and just wouldn't let it go.
Trivia: In the MyAnimeList page there is no staff added to the but between the characters, the main character (and the only character for that matter) is named as the actress. In the animation, we don’t just see anyone, but Kuriyama Chiaki herself being animated. That’s cool.
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