Review: Only You: An Animated Shorts Collection

“Animation is a medium, not a genre.”

With Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio recently winning the Oscar for Best Animation Feature, this quote from the visionary filmmaker continues to be more meaningful than ever. As I grew up with animation, I gradually grew more appreciative of the style through its artistic appeal and the hard-working crew that brought it to life. It’s more than just something to distract young kids and families with its cartoonish slapstick and goofy characters like the ones from Disney and Illumination. Instead, it serves as a narrative tool to represent storytelling through its artistic style at an emotional level, which is something most live-action films struggle to accomplish. For more context, look at the Disney live-action remakes of their animated classics.

Every current or up-and-coming creator has a unique vision of storytelling they want to share with their audiences via film and television. Unsurprisingly, the art of animation is no exception, with some examples being Hayao Miyazaki and Pete Doctor from Pixar. This brings us to the latest animated release from HBO Max, Only You, a collection of animated shorts bringing each different story to life through the eyes of diverse creators.  

This concept and my love for animation had piqued my curiosity more than some of the streaming service’s recent animated content, including the heavily-ridiculed Velma series featuring Mindy Kaling. But was it able to meet the expectations of several animation fanatics like me? Well, if you’re an animation expert and a fan of mature themes, then I would say absolutely.  

Only You consists of eight animated short films created by twelve underrepresented artists. Each episode has a different animation style that represents the story it tells. The styles showcase the artistic presentations and display the symbolisms depicted by the characters, objects, and backgrounds. Some of its shorts include “Burning Rubber”, which involves a young man (Dante Hoagland) competing in a Wallball tournament, and “Aroon”, a tale about a hero questioning his morality and purpose. In just about five to seven minutes, the creators took enough time to express their creativity through their storytelling, visuals, and mature themes without overstaying their welcome. The results are nearly perfect, but they succeed in providing brighter futures for the young artists, including Yoo Lee for “Welcome to 8th Street” and Jerred Thomas North and Tsvetelina Zdraveva for “Yellowbird”.

The animation is the biggest selling point for Only You. Using a variety of distinct visuals, each short brings a refreshing sense of identity into their storytelling and genre, including fantasy, comedy, and drama. For example, you have the black and white graphic novel presentation from “Burning Rubber” containing several anime influences similar to Into the Spider-Verse and the puppet marionette style for “Aroon”. The animation styles reflect their stories in a stunning and artistic sense that’ll surely leave animation fans awestruck. However, the only style I felt fell short of the rest was the CGI animation for “Kent Hammer”. “Kent Hammer” effectively resembles the psychological stress of the business world and real life using talking inanimate objects. However, the CGI made the short look like it came out of a cutscene from an indie video game, and not in a good way. It’s not bad, but compared to the other shorts I’ve seen, the CGI looked a bit lackluster.

Aside from their presentations, the shorts deliver strong, emotional storytelling resembling mature themes such as immigration, depression, humanity, environment, and self-acceptance. Some of the best examples include “Yellowbird”, “Monstr”, and “Leech”. “Yellowbird” offers a poignant and relatable depiction of an immigrant Yana (Irmena Chichikova), struggling to maintain her legal status when her father (Miroslav Barnyashev) died in Bulgaria. Then, there’s “Monstr” by Tank Standing Buffalo, a harrowing, symbolic short of a young artist seeking to forgive himself for his past demons. Finally, “Leech”, by Aalaa Mohamed, features an obese patient named Minna (Ruby Therese Mansouri) falling victim to a vampire’s scheme to control his clients’ lifestyle so he can gain the perfect blood quality. Minna’s extreme plan causes her to realize the dangers of pushing herself to retrieve her ideal body and accept the one she has now. While these shorts benefit from their distinct styles, it was their thought-provoking themes and creative narratives that made them divine pieces of media art.

In conclusion, Only You: An Animated Shorts Collection is another fantastic example of what animation can accomplish. It’s more than just a genre made for kids. It’s an art form that expresses an artist’s reflections on life and sense of creativity. Regarding the distinct and spectacular presentations, compelling stories, and strong themes, the shorts are sublime pieces representing animation as a medium and the artistic values of the people that made them. If you want another reason why animation should be taken seriously, you should definitely check this collection out on HBO Max.