This Boy Caught a Merman

A 2012 follow-up to animator Soubi Yamamoto's This Boy Can Fight Aliens (VL-11/12)—a similar short anime in the homoerotic Japanese cartoon and "boys love" genre known as "yaoi"—This Boy Caught a Merman centers on Shima, a sensitive school-age youth grieving over the death of his grandfather, who falls into the ocean but is rescued by a nameless blond, hunky merman. Shima allows the merman to live at his home (in an inflatable kiddie pool), and their friendship turns into something deeper, albeit non-explicit (except for kissing). At a mere half-hour, the plotline here is short on incident and action; rather, it's the offbeat themes and visuals that hold the viewer's attention. Yamamoto's art is über-stylized, incorporating Kanji-character writing and expressions (translated in subtitle form) as pictorial elements, while recognizable anime-type drawing is rendered here as wildly avant-garde in the manner of digital cutout-animation. Presented in a dual-language release, rated TV-MA, this is a strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)