Purely by accident, I happened to discover this double-set of two short films released by Sentai Filmworks. You really have to work at it to find much information or video regarding "Coicent" or "Five Numbers." Sadly, I can't say it's worth the effort to find it, although it might be if you find yourself curious. These short films are about 30 minutes each, and are completely unrelated. "Coicent" is about a boy on a field trip who gets separated from the group, and finds himself on an adventure around the city helping an artificial young girl on the run from her masters. It's a sweet story, and a little crazy with its visuals. Character designs and city sights aside, there are deer in this film. How many other films have deer in them? And these are the craziest, creepiest deer I've seen, although I count them as the best part. While it is a sweet romance, the film feels far too short for the audience to get to know the characters better. If fleshed out a lot more, this could have been an interesting full-length film. "Five Numbers" feels much more complete, although not as colorful. It involves a group of five people who wake up after a long sleep in a security prison. As they find out where they are, we learn more about each of the characters and exactly what they did to end up in the prison. They all have interesting stories to tell, and their own motives to escape. It feels right as a short film, although the ending isn't as satisfying as Coicent's ending: it's actually a much more interesting ending, but the last couple minutes may confuse you, as clever as it is. What you might not realize buying this (like me) is that both films are actually computer animated. Don't let the cover art fool you. These were early cel-shaded computer animated films that attempted to standard anime styles. If you look closely, you can actually see tiny bits and scenes that were hand-drawn, but it makes you question why in the world they would use both in the first place. They actually look pretty good: Coicent's facially expressions are pretty animated, and Five Numbers has its own style that makes it mimic hand-drawn pencil in its own way. But like most 3d anime, mouths look really weird with the English dub, and given how cool the hand-drawn cover art looks, I wish it was done with traditional animation. Oh well. Overall, I liked "Five Numbers" a little more, but neither are huge standouts. They are actually quite fair, but short, and this isn't worth the price. I found out that a second "feature^2" set was released with two more films, and if these were both combined, it might be worth the money. For anyone interested, I'd recommend trying to watch these online first, but if you feel lucky, it might be worth a gamble. At least it might get more films like this outside of Japan.
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