The Matierica phenomenon™ has been taking the anime community by storm as of the last year or so. It's a short film that everybody's talking about, yet nobody thus far has made a video or written a review. It could be the TikTok effect where tons of people are aware of a certain show or movie, yet not a lot of thoughtful discussion springs out of that boom in popularity. I am here to rectify that and tell you why Matierica is actually worth the hype. Matierica is a short film by Keita Kurosaka, famous for his short animations uploaded to the internet. What differentiates Matiericafrom his other works is the sound design, not unlike something like Death Grips. Many of his other films have harsh noise or experimental ambiance heavily implemented into their sound design, but also have more traditional elements like voice acting and music. Examples of this include the likes of Midori-ko, Mochibei and Watashi no Kao. While classics in their own regard, Matierica is more of a throwback to his earlier works like Metamorphose Works No.1 and Sea Roar. Matierica doesn't follow traditional storytelling you would see in shows like Jujutsu Kaisen and Robokko Beeton. It's a sequence of drawings made to form an unsettling morphing motion. The cover art leaves the story up to personal interpretation and that's the fun of figuring it out. It's not too unlike Serial Experiments Lain as something you may have to watch a couple times to fully piece together what's going on. For this reason I would recommend you watch it in a groupwatch setting to bounce theories back and forth as to what it could all mean. I'll refrain from putting my own interpretation here due to spoiler reasons. This movie can be enjoyed even if you are spoiled, but I would naturally recommend going in blind.

Matierica is a great film that I would recommend to just about anybody. Despite being a film that came out in 2017, the art still holds up great which is important for a movie that is so artistically driven. If you're sick of hearing about it everywhere, please reconsider it. I know not all seasonals that get hyped up are worth it or stand the test of time, but Matierica is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that's popular for a reason. Therefore I cannot give it anything lower than a strong 8, but it could potentially be a low to mid 9 upon further rewatches.