This review contains spoilers for the entirety of the short film. What we have excreted from an institution housing prudent and wellmeaning talent such as Production I.G and lauded by many of the film festivals it was submitted to is a terrible quasiutilitarian short film that vilifies people for transgressing against a social contract wherein the rudimentary supplements for sustainable lifeindeed never does the film suggest that the girl living in the middle of remotenowhere thrives off privilege or luxurycome at the cost of your very organs. Stop and think about the films message and the way it handles it: The ordinarily inanimate objects who for the purposes of desensitizing the viewer to a homeopathic presentation of the films themes are provided the excellence of speech and intelligence that us viewers can parse for ourselves and empathize with. The film introduces us to its moral landscape by beginning with a physical spat between clips of differing colors sprouting from libelous exchanges across the clothing they embed developing into a fullblown battle against each other leading to their separation to individual clips broken down to the coil and comically ending with the girls mending of them by connecting their separate partsseparate by color or limbto one another to supersede her nowdestroyed batch of clips and proceed with her clippings. Notice my usage of the adverb comically prior to that final clause and recall to mind that commaclipped insertion in the sentence following that colon mark. Have you now reached the cave where my breadcrumbs trail? Before I dig my heels down this film any more than I already have let us first remind ourselves of its title: Pigtails that innocuous string of eight letters arranged for international release that when serving as its crown for promotional material engenders a sweet frailness within our hearts and deceives it with a supposed innocence. What of its Japanese title? Mitsuami no Kamisama of which a literal translation on the Wikipedia page spells out God with the Braided Pigtail Hair. It isnt as poetic or concise as Pigtails can be nor does it fit well with the minimalist aesthetic bound to be many of its audiences first exposure to it but it does grant us a single thread which we can pursue in its thematic fineries: that being its description of the female lead as a God or kamisama in Japanese. This word is essentially the cement to which we are ascribe the role of deity to those above our planar perspectives and its manifestations in the film can be seen in the relationship between the objects and the Pigtails Girl as well as the Pigtails Girl and the government whose scientists periodically maintain her health in preparation for their eventual dissection of her while also supplementing us with the lenses through which we can reason out its animistic personification of the objects. The Goddess of Pigtails exercises her control over the Talking Clips by mending them by means of connection of one white leg to its red counterpart. Likewise the PigtailedGirl herself shall when her time of expiration comes about be dismembered by the authorities for the sake of bringing happiness or rejuvenating life to several other people in need of her organs. We are to first laugh over the irony of the former before straining ourselves over the utility of the latter. Whenever the film cares to hammer down the girls desire to seize happiness for herself it must negate that humanity with an everwaning unethical philosophy that comes outside of her own autonomy as an individual and citizen within the country. Since telling this story outside of flimsy animism would conjure up a nightmare of a facility that breeds the invalidation of ones own rights for the sake of supposedly hardearned cash we see the spans of this decrepit exploitation through the homeopathic lenses of its objects. These talking puppets become the sole groundwork for which we can derive and apply much of our interpretation of the film: Our female lead finds the comfort she needs through the recollection of memories dear to her heart whether it be her parents toothbrushes she keeps in spite of their owners demise or her acquisition of a stray balloon stirring the white vignettes of a day whose clouds were permeated by the flight of released balloons. Whereas the mailman has sprung newfound happiness within her these objects bring about happiness driven by the comfort of the past. Yet this steel conviction comes without prudence: A radio is rebuked by an umbrella and a pillow for meaning to tell of the terrifying truths that plague the world as it is but it soon appeases the two when brought by the mailman to the girls bed it broadcasts a song that sends a stringstrum melody and honeysweet mellifluousness down to the comfort and protection they provide themselves. If you find this to be anything besides a strengthening of the biases that have envenomed us for centuries then you have successfully fallen for the trap of Ichiko Aobas lovely composition which had initially tempted even me and you have forsaken information for the bliss of ignorance. Moreover when the truth of PigtailedGirls reality is told to us by the red balloon brought from the outskirts of the walls interspersed with the mailmans discovery of a surgical severing and disembowelment of one of these victims we piece together the governing principle within this facility: one that champions the maximization of happiness and wellbeing of the involved parties brought to you most notably by that Mill whose eloquence is far beneath that of Miltons. We do not see a wellconstructed debate in this scene only a brief sequence of exposition by the refugee ballon followed by a proposal for conformity by a worndown teddy bear. Its lack of substance is precisely why it allows the swift and jarring transition from conformity to transgression in the following scene where even the teddy bear who found a pragmatism in utilitarianism urges the PigtailedGirl to run for her life. At this point it comes as no surprise that the instilling of sentience into these objects has worked its way towards the path antithetical to an affirmation thereof. Though the transmission of material now useless in its current apparatus to a newer one may be deemed sustainable the contextualization of these ideas through literal sentience puts into question the ethicality of the deed. Utilitarianism as a philosophy doesnt work in any functional society because it eradicates the bodily autonomy one may have over oneself while allowing itself to be justified by the oftenexploitative social contract which demands the individual be stripped of certain expenditures of their self shall they wish to live under a certain society. Why is it that the mailman and the janitor who cleans his room do not know of the dissections until the former spies on one of such procedures? Simply because parading such to the public would bombard the government with scrutiny among the masses. The film proposes to us a society in which the upper class can pay for the organs of those more unfortunate than them all for the sake of its prosperity which is literally capitalism. So much for maximizing good with the least amount of harm. If you still find yourself unpersuaded by my claims you need only replay the scene in which the girl feigns her inclusion with the boy to that world outside the walls that have barricaded her from freedom for so long. Why upon letting go of her hand does the boy become distraught and the film cut to downward shot of her body falling of whom its surroundings are momentarily transposed by a spatial nothingness soon becoming occupied by a clutter of fresh clean and new objects all suspended in time then disrupted by the sound of the ladder hitting the ground damning us by the sight of her white dress surrounded by the disordered mess of shattered disposed and old objects. She revolts against the objects conditioned to serve her under subsidiary inanimate roles she appeases to the government that violates the autonomy of another person to maximize utilityshe becomes an object. Why do you think that the film never shows us the verbalized thoughts of the objects when she returns to her house that cage binding her to her one purpose in life besides that of the red balloon having loomed from the other side? Where balloons had once been the stimulus reigniting memories of former happiness they have now become the symbol whose happiness she must protect. Our protagonists maturation comes from her rejection of that which would have soothed her humanity love and happiness for the sake of the oppressive and exploitative common good diluted through the shreds of propaganda and mass manipulation. Forever holding the white vignettes of her childhood she chooses to stay inside the cave.