Reviews

Monotonous Purgatory is (to my knowledge, this number may be five) the third of three oil-on-glass films directed by Shiroki Saori. Monotonous Purgatory is a music video done in collaboration with the Tokyo-based band matryoshka for their 2012 album Laideronnette. The overall animation is quite stunning. Oil upon glass gives off a very unique look that you will not see anywhere else. The song itself is quite interesting. Despite being a bit hard to hear (for me at least), as long as you read the lyrics prior or during, you should understand what the vocalist is saying.

I will not try to interpret what Monotonous Purgatory is about; that is up to you to decide.

Now I would like to speak about the film's Director/Animator, Shiroki Saori. It appears that after this film, Shiroki has dropped animation. Through light research, I have not been able to find a reference to Shiroki in any credited role other than what I believe to be a compilation film released in 2015 for presumably a French audience (L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise - Volume 3). I was also able to find an archive of Shiroki's website; however, the last archive with any semblance of a website was on the 25th of December, 2012. And even so, many of the off-links were not archived. I will link it, as it is an interesting look through (https://web.archive.org/web/20121225234824/http://www.saorishiroki.net/). Neither of the socials Shiroki had listed on their site work, with the YouTube having been deleted and the X (formerly Twitter) account appearing to have had a new person use the handle on a new account.

I find it interesting how these animators appear from nowhere, drop amazing work like this, then disappear.

If you're wondering why a six for the rating, its just using my rating scale.