By Nick Nitkowski

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of animation. Especially anime. So, hen I saw that an anime film was being presented at the Florida Film Festival, I knew immediately that I had to see it. Subbed, dubbed, it didn’t matter to me. I was already sold without having seen a single trailer. All that sold me was a single screenshot. So, now that I’ve seen it, the big question arises… was it any good? Let’s find out!

“The Concierge” as stated earlier is an anime film based on a Japanese manga series entitled “The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store”. The film is about a department store for anthropomorphic animals to shops to their hearts content. The story focuses on a human concierge in training named Akino who does her best to learn all of the important aspects of being a concierge while doing anything and everything she can to satisfy every animal customer’s needs.

The story of the film is very simple. Throughout the movie, we follow this concierge as she helps as many animal shoppers as she can. So simple and yet I found it to be very effective. This film was very enjoyable and with mere a runtime of only an hour and ten minutes, it definitely does not overstay its welcome. In fact, I’d say that the runtime for this film felt perfect. I was actually surprised to know how short the film actually was, but it didn’t matter because I was fully invested in the story. It never felt too long or too short.

The film had a very decent amount of humor in it as well. There were multiple times where I found myself laughing a lot. Some of the humor came from running gags of a certain individual just popping up in the most random of places. Again, simple yet effective. Definitely manages to crack a few laughs.

The animation, like with most anime films, was amazing! The one thing I love about anime films is that they never abandon the 2D animation style. Some tend to go full 3D animation or try to blend the two together. But 9 times of out 10, it’s old-school hand drawn animation. An artform mostly forgotten or very underutilized here in the States, but holding strong in Japan. From character designs, to art style, to colors, this film is absolutely mesmerizing from start to finish.

There were even moments in the film where I got a little misty-eyed. As the film’s simple yet effective message of how good things can happen when you help even one person in need just really spoke to me and had me walking out of the theater with some water in the eyes and a smile on my face. I honestly couldn’t find a single thing wrong with this film. Any fans of anime or animation in general should definitely give this film a watch.

5 stars