Shelf Life

Typhoon Noruda

One interesting side effect of reviewing both streaming and physical media is that I rarely go into a Shelf Life review completely blind. By the time a series or movie comes out on disc, I typically have some sense of its premise and whether or not it was well-received during its simulcast run. Typhoon Noruda is a rare exception to that rule; I had never heard of it until it showed up on my review schedule. As a short film from a new director and a relatively unknown studio, it likely flew under most folks' radar when it premiered in 2015. Now that it's available in English, it's certainly worth a look.

As you may have guessed, this film takes place during a typhoon. A group of middle school students are in the middle of preparing for their annual culture festival, and they end up trapped at school because of the storm. The timing couldn't be worse for best friends Azuma and Saijo, who are in the middle of a bitter feud over Azuma's decision to quit their baseball team. The two boys don't want anything to do with one another, but they're forced to work together when Azuma discovers a mysterious girl named Noruda on school grounds. Noruda turns out to be a visitor from another world, and the secret she carries could spell disaster for Earth.

When you only have about half an hour to tell a story, it's important to keep things simple. Typhoon Noruda does this reasonably well, sticking with the tried and true “ordinary boy meets extraordinary girl” formula. The basic plot points are familiar enough that the film doesn't need to get bogged down in lore or superfluous details; bad things will happen if Azuma doesn't help Noruda, and that's about all we need to know. The themes of the story are also on the simple and universal side, making them easily relatable. There's a reasonably compelling coming-of-age story packed in here as Azuma fights with his childhood friend, asserts his independence, and then reconciles with Saijo in time to save the day. It's a story that most viewers will have heard before, but that familiarity is part of the reason it works well within a short running time.

The downside to keeping Typhoon Noruda short and sweet is that the pacing is inevitably rushed. There's almost no downtime here, and the story moves from one beat to the next before any one moment has a chance to sink in. This makes it hard to engage with the film on any level beyond “This is holding my attention.” If you've ever seen an anime adaptation of a manga series that tries to cram too much source material into too few episodes, this experience is pretty similar. It feels like there's more that could've been said about each of the major plotlines: the feud between Azuma and Saijo, Noruda's sinister mission, and the not-quite-romance that blossoms between Noruda and Azuma. Given twenty more minutes to fill in the details, this could've been a genuinely memorable film instead of just an entertaining one.

That time crunch also has smaller significant side effects. The dialogue is in desperate need of subtlety, and characters are constantly forced to say exactly what they mean in order to keep the story moving. It's a lot of exposition with very little conversation, which makes it hard to sell the idea that the characters are real people rather than fictional constructs. The characters' personalities also end up being defined by their situations: Saijo is the angry guy because of his fight with Azuma, Azuma is the nice guy because he finds Noruda and decides to help her, and Noruda is the inscrutable alien girl who doesn't have much personality until after the big conflict is resolved. It feels like any depth or complexity these kids had ended up on the cutting room floor.

The good news is that while the plot may be a no-frills affair, the visuals in Typhoon Noruda are downright lavish. Character movements are smooth and natural, backgrounds are packed with detail, and there are some incredibly ambitious moving camera shots that look like they were pulled from a major animated film. Aside from some merely average CG work on Noruda's spaceship, this is a damn fine-looking piece of animation. This Blu-Ray release from Sentai Filmworks also includes an extra short film, which is similarly eye-catching in its design and production. There's a decent English dub on disc as well, though it suffers from the same over-simplified dialogue as the original Japanese script.

Typhoon Noruda is good enough to keep you engaged in the moment, and it's easily worth half an hour of your time to watch through once. Beyond that, it works more as an introduction to its director than as a standalone piece of entertainment. It's just too short to make the most of its story potential. I'm intrigued to see if Yojiro Arai gets a chance to direct something with a more substantial running time, since this directorial debut is an impressive first step.
-Paul[TOP]