What are the best short anime?

DID YOU KNOW?

Your Name, the highest grossing anime movie of all time, had a runtime of 106 minutes. Ironically enough, the film’s writer and director, Makoto Shinkai, has also made one of the shortest Japanese anime films to be sold: She and Her Cat, released in 1999. The short black-and-white-film runs for five minutes and follows the story of a cat and his female owner over the span of one year, all told through the cat’s perspective. Shinkai had originally made the film for a romantic interest at the time, and it was meant to help them through a difficult time of their life. Shinkai used his experience of living in an apartment surrounded by electrical wires in order to portray the “vague loneliness of living”, “slight pain”, and “modest warmth”. The film is animated by Shinkai himself using hand-drawn animations, with 3D scenes being rendered with Adobe After Effects and additional effects added using Shade 3D, Adobe Illustrator, and Lightwave 3D. Shinkai explained that he left the film in black and white to minimize complex procedures and to save space on his computer, letting the simplicity speak for itself. She and Her Cat was the film that earned Makoto Shinkai his fame and led to him working for CoMix Wave Films, and eventually, to his later films, including Your Name.

She and Her Cat isn’t the only short film that Makoto Shinkai made, but it is one you can watch on a quick break. The same goes for the best short anime series on this list. Try out Aggretsuko or Tonari no Seki-kun if you want something of similar length, or you can go for FLCL if you want full-length episodes. Eitherway, your break won’t have a SHORTage on anime to watch!