Short Peace

From revered animator Katsuhiro Otomo, this is an uneven but visually dazzling 2013 feature-length anthology of four original anime shorts. Only one compact tale achieves the perfect match of art and ironic storyline: the closing segment, Hajimi Katoki's hard-combat sci-fi piece "A Farewell to Weapons," in which post-apocalypse soldiers performing cleanup in a ruined city wind up battling GONK-18, a tough, determined robot tank. The other three stories here are esoteric period pieces. Otomo directed the experimental "Combustible," which bridges the stylistic gap between Astro Boy-influenced modern anime and traditional Japanese scrollwork of past centuries to tell a tragic tale about feudal firefighting (?!). Hiroaki Ando directed “Gambo,” a gory smackdown pitting a samurai and a noble white bear against a monstrous old-school Japanese demon-ogre. And the vividly rendered but puzzling Oscar-nominated opener, Shuhei Morita's folklore-influenced "Possessions," finds a storm-tossed traveler spending the night in an abandoned temple where he is obligated to repair discarded objects. Available in separate dual-language DVD and Blu-ray editions, rated TV-MA, this is recommended. (C. Cassady)