Review of Cencoroll

A boy and his transforming blob Cencoroll is a 26 minute "movie" about the titular Cencoroll or "Cenco", a transforming blob that's taken care of by Tetsu Amamiya voiced by Hiro Shimono. Not until a chance encounter with Yuki voiced by Kana Hanazawa, is Yuki swept up when other guy by the name of Shuu voiced by Ryohei Kimura wanting Cenco a fight breaks out... This being a 20 something minute movie, the premise is about the majority of what happens in this movie and what5 substance we can get from this movie is the interactions with it's characters at best, the fights at worst, but it'snot bad though this movie being this short has some obvious downsides, the most obvious being the fact of it's length almost makes this movie be like a cliff notes of a fully formed idea and a full movie at that, seriously Cencoroll as a movie speeds through it's three act structure so quickly within it's 26 minute runtime it's both baffling they pulled it off but also it could be something like a proper movie if it was longer.

Cencoroll's strengths lies in it's characters interactions, yes even Cenco himself, as his actions speak louder than words and for a transforming monstrosity that's saying something. Cenco with what little time he had with Yuki, grows quickly attached to her while Tetsu is trying to deal with the threat of Shuu and his Cencoroll his own way while trying to protect both Yuki and Cenco by being stoic and a tsundere to both of them.

The animation done by Think Corporations is a decently animated movie, the fights and the fluid animation by Cenco and the Cencoroll's were done well and LA was thinking they would implement 3DCGI but nope (from what LA could tell anyways), entirely in traditional animation. The character designs reminded LA of Mamoru Hosoda's designs in a ways but with it's own touches to it. Nonetheless along with the character interactions, the animation done by Think Coporations was great as well.

Voice acting, though with a minimal cast, was great, with Hiro Shimono as the stoic Tetsu, Kana Hanazawa doing her genki scthick and doing it well as Yuki, bringing the energy it needed in this movie and Ryohei Kimura as the smug "villain" of this movie.

Cencoroll may seem like a cliff notes of a fully thought out idea just without the runtime of a full movie, but for what it was worth, it wasn't that bad, in fact it's in the details that Cencoroll made up for it's 26 minutes of runtime not to mention it's strengths of animation and character interactions didn't make this movie a waste of time and was entertaining.

If only Cencoroll actually gotten a longer runtime and fully executed it's ideas then it would be amazing, but what Cencoroll is, is still good enough experience all the same.