Arco: Densely packed with ideas but comes crashing down
- Mar 21
- 2 min read
‘Arco' is an anime-style animation set in the near-future, which tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a young girl cut adrift from her family and a mystical, time-travelling friend.
The film brings together two children’s parallel journeys into adolescence: one, Iris, from the near-future and the other, Arco, from a more distant one.
Iris is a pre-teen school girl living in suburbia in 2075 left to care for her infant brother with the help of a robot, whilst her parents live elsewhere; overworked and only appearing in hologram-form to read bedtime stories.
The neglected Iris inevitably becomes truant, choosing the skip class to explore nature. And it’s here, in a nearby woodland, that she discovers Arco; a boy of the same age from the distant future who has, similarly, disobeyed his parents but paid a much more serious price.
The film goes on to show the blossoming of their friendship, in the face natural disasters, being chased down by police-robots and pestered a band of mischievous, local hobbyists.
The film presents some thought-provoking and original themes. Getting to think about how the world might change within a few generations and much further into the future in the same film, is an exciting notion. Equally, with the 2075 adults completely alienated from the world in front of them (usually equipped with digital sunglasses) whilst their children crave nature and adventure, it makes you think about the alienating impact of tech. And ecological disaster lingers in the background with hellish forest fires licking around the edges of Iris’s otherwise idyllic town towards the film’s climax.
Sadly though, the density of ideas means none of them are properly explored. And the film’s animation style makes it hard to connect too. Doll-like faces, highly saturated colours and the shrill shrikes of concern squeaked by the children (for some reason stock in Ghibli-esque animations of this style) throughout the film can make it feel both overwhelming and remote.
It might be that these elements are designed for children, but if so I find it hard to understand what they’d see in the complexity of the plot and its many ambiguities and loose ends.
Overall, much like its eponymous hero, ’Arco’ launches you into an exciting new world only to later come crashing down.
4/10
