On a lark, I decided to check out Break Ups, much for the same reason I checked out Time of Eve: it's short. At a quarter to midnight, it's rather easy to give up 15 minutes to try something different. And different it is. Hearing Korean when expecting Japanese does funny things to the brain, and in a way, the confusion paved the way for a rather enjoyable experience.

Break Ups begins during the act — we meet our newly-ex couple on a beach, battle weary and ready to end it for good. They find a washed up device in the sand that is not a hallucinogenic drug of some kind. The girl takes the disc-like device in hand and slams it into a rock...it doesn't break. When they both touch it, it whirls into action and starts transporting them to scenes from their multiple break-ups and back-togethers.

Brilliant, colorful background work and subtle intonation of melody drive the narrative as much as dialogue. By contrast the character work and character animation are plain...even cheap looking, but it's beautiful, in a way. We see their faces but don't learn their names, and their shared history speaks for them in living color. The device they found represents of course the cyclical nature of things, and after too short a time, we're back on the beach where we began. But this time, our two leads leave off a bit wiser than before. Cycles aren't so rigid as they sometimes seem, and maybe the lovebirds aren't either.