a piece of PHANTASMAGORIA

__A Piece of PHANTASMAGORIA.
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This review contains no spoilers, feel free to read.

It's a very mystifying experience that is 'A piece of PHANTASMAGORIA' it would possibly be 'Curious mystical dreams with an interstellar touch.' or "Humanity has long passed the days of its growth period and now we are here in this mysterious land where things have grown quite far out of how normal people might see them be." PHANTASMAGORIA is a series of shorts surrounding the planet..Phantasmagoria! Every short is a different small adventure where you get to explore. The anime says that this is something that you find in your dreams hidden away.

But really what is this work like? well.. it's very tender. It's quiet. It's collected. Its peaceful. Mystifying. A fantasy series that has a kind of child-like wonder imbued in its stories. A little log, a series of chapters depicting this wonderous planet and its humourous senses. Even the sensation of the star that will go soon is suddenly turned into something funny as his tale is turned on its head do a drop of the...

You might be looking at this review completely blind, not knowing whether it will actually deliver on what it has to show, its short synopsis on the page leaves you itching at your head. Its poster is a bit fantastical. But I can tell you it will deliver. All its elements dance in beat to each other to give you a tender experience. Its art style, its subdued animation, its calming music and of course its narrator and the voice actors of said characters sell the idea perfectly. It all dances in tone with each other. Shigeru Tamura's minimalistic drawings are like the ones most will remember from their youths. The stories often follow a sweet soft old man. The animation is limited but it is limited with reason to feed into the sensations of the whole.

I don't think one can get bored easily by it, even if it is a little silent. Surely you will feel something from this moving children's picture book. For the youth, it's youth. For the old, it's memory. To return to a part of your young self, that's what it's for me.

Quite a bit of shots are distant, so we get a whole overview of the scene. Through the medium-wide shots, we see all kinds of little things happening. Little. Everything has been made so small. Lightbulbs are huge. The story is in our little hands. Sometimes we are hit with the close-up and those close-ups feel incredibly tender. Its framing really ends up representing the feelings of the scenes well. Like a professor sending a sick girl, his progress is obviously accompanied by a tender smaller frame of him writing. Perfect.

I'd say if you have a particular knack for this kind of subdued, mystical, dreamy anime with a neat sense of humor. Then this is for you.

While traveling the realms of dreams. I found a little planned called "Phantasmagoria" this has been a story from that planet.
Goodbye.