obashirian - 2014-06-09 21:25:19

Kick-Heart is a short film written and directed by Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba, The Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong) and was funded by Kickstater. The film actually aired on Toonami but still hasn't received much widespread attention. The story revolves around a wrestler named Romeo who enjoys losing to women he is wrestling against. The story is a fetish tale that is very cliche and simple but has great execution and doesn't feel overly forced. What really saves this lackluster story is the character of Romeo who is very dynamic and well developed, something that is extremely impressive for a 12 minute time span. At first Romeo is very frustrated about not being able to wrestle against Juliet but when he finally does, he enjoys it but at the same time has a flashback to his childhood and realizes that he also values his own self-esteem and pride. The animation was fantastic, it was vibrant, psychedelic and the colors were beautiful. Everything managed to look very odd without looking very confusing. My favorite part, which is sort of returning to the character development is that after Romeo has his change of heart and he returns to the orphanage, it is no longer run down and the colors turned bright and happy when previously they were dull and depressing. The music was fine, nothing annoying or out of place just not memorable or special. All in all Kick-Heart has all the shortcomings that short films often do but seems to exceed expectations in some departments. I would suggest you go give it a watch since it won't exactly take up much of your time but don't have super high expectations for it.