“Tsukino no Ban” (”In the Evening of a Moonlit Night”) directed by Kazuyoshi Yaginuma, erstwhile animator for Studio 4°C on films including Akira. This short is part 4 of Studio 4°C’s 2001 OVA “Digital Juice.”

High quality at Stage 6.

It’s a curious artifact — the short is steeped in a typical anime combination of childlike innocence and an oddly naïve eroticism, complete with creepy Lolita angle.

The fact that it’s played so straight — with sensitive attention paid to movement and a nostalgic design worthy of Miyazaki — just makes it more unnerving, as it appears that we’re intended to take it all at face value. Far be it from me to moralize, but I get nervous around depictions of the fetishisation of the disenfranchised.

There’s some subtle 3D in there too, which probably explains this short’s inclusion in a collection called “Digital Juice.”

The music is the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning.”

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