"His mask protected me from the cloud, but nothing I had, protected me from the people."The Dam Keeper is an emotionally engaging animated short co-directed by Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi, which I thought could've upset Disney's candidate (Feast) for the Oscar win this year. The hand painted 2D animation style wasn't my favorite, but the story makes up for it with a lot of heart. The short centers on a young pig who has a very important task. He is the Dam Keeper, in other words he is in charge of operating a large windmill at the entrance of the city which keeps all the pollution out. But that isn't the only darkness that the pig has to face. In school the rest of the kids make fun of him and he is constantly bullied by everyone. This is a darkness which he doesn't know how to face. When a young new fox arrives at the school the two become close and he learns that through drawing he can find a new means of expression. The story is emotionally engaging and we sympathize for the main character and how he is alienated from the rest of the kids. The only dialogue in the film is voiced by a narrator (Lars Mikkelsen), the rest of the story is told through the animation and its accompanying score. There is an interesting resemblance going on between the darkness that the pig faces to protect the city and the darkness he faces in his own personal life. The Dam Keeper is a rare animated film that manages to make an impact on the audience despite its short run time. http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/

The Dam Keeper is the richest, most plot-driven short of this year's animated batch of Oscar shorts. Captured in animation that resembles the illustrations of a storybook you grew up reading as a child, The Dam Keeper concerns a pig who controls the dam of his town. The dam's job is to block out the darkness from casting an ugly, dreary shadow onto the neighborhood, and the pig's now deceased father taught him the ways to fight off the darkness. At school, however, darkness hovers over the pig like a dark cloud, as he's bullied profusely, one day, befriending a fox who loves to sketch and shows him liberation through means of animation.It's as if the writing/directing of Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi had past experiences with bullies as children and used animation as a tactic to set their mind free, making The Dam Keeper a short that could potentially bear a very heavy personal meaning. It also shows the way that while the physical darkness can be fought in this particular world that, like in the natural world, feelings of sadness and alienation unfortunately cannot, and through tender, affectionate writing and animation does The Dam Keeper helps us realize that, crafting a beautiful story and a wonderfully easy-on-the-eyes animation style.Directed by: Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi.

This short tells the story of a pig who's responsible for "keeping the dam", a critically important job inherited from his father. We're shown that this involves winding a crank tied to a windmill on top of a dam overlooking a small town. This job must be performed at regular intervals or else the town will be consumed by...uh...water?...no, it's a dark cloud of...pollution?...What?!?I was very confused and distracted by why the windmill on top of the dam needed to be wound, then later in the film we do get to see what happens when the dam doesn't get "kept" properly....I thought we were seeing dark water over-topping the dam and flooding the town, but it is later described as "dark clouds". The animation was so rough and impressionistic, it wasn't at all clear what we were expected to be seeing.So...the windmill isn't a windmill but a giant fan, powered by a wound-up spring, which blows the pollution clouds away? Why is it on top of a dam? Since it's on the dam anyway, why isn't it powered by the water pressure that the dam is holding back? Also, if this job, whatever it is, is so important to the health of the whole town, why is it left in the hands of a grade-schooler?The titular part of the story made so little sense that it took away much of my interest in appreciating the other part of the story, about isolation, loneliness, and bullying that this youngster experiences at the hands of his school classmates. When a new kid, a fox, comes to town, a unlikely friendship develops. That story was interesting and touching, but it would have been more effective without any dam keeping.

The Dam Keeper is my choice for the best of the animated shorts and I think the quality difference between this and the rest of the films is pretty obvious. Like The Bigger Picture, this one has the look of a painting--which is quite unusual for an animated film. But the paintings are of a much higher quality and there is an amazing artistry that set this one apart---it just looks great. While the style isn't quite as lush as Petrov's style (but whose is?!), it is gorgeous and the filmmakers, Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi, used over 8000 paintings to make this short film. The story is very sentimental and sweet--and not in way that is cloying or over the top. It left me feeling satisfied and I love the website for the film (https://www.thedamkeeper.com/) and it's nearly as creative as the film itself.UPDATE: This film lost to the Disney short. Perhaps it might sound snarky, but I assume many of the folks who voted for these films probably didn't see them all---and "Feast" was the only one that had widespread release (with "Big Hero 6"). That's the only way I could explain "The Dam Keeper" not winning.