Gigguk has been a staple in the anime community for as long as I can remember. When he announced that he was making his own anime, it was a surprise to us all. When he announced that it was an isekai, we thought that he had finally lost his mind. Lo and behold, it came to fruition, and its name is baan. Clocking in at just a smidge over 18 minutes, did this anime have enough time to capture a meaningful story?
Let's go!
Euthania is a fictional world filled with nature and magic. Over time, Euthanians and humans have built warp gates connecting our two worlds. A man named Daichi and a girl named Rinrada (or Rin, for short) use the gate to travel to each other's worlds, both with one simple goal in mind: to start over.
At first, the anime short leads you to believe that Daichi and Rin traveled at the same time, but that is not the case, as you will discover as the short progresses. There is a connection and a reason that needs to be discovered.
In essence, baan's story is about discovering what is important to you, and sorting out the emotions inside of you to discover what that important thing is, with a little bit of isekai and reverse isekai tossed in.
Studio Daisy did an incredible job with the visuals and animation here. The world Euthania was brought to life as described. When it was said to be a world of nature and magic, every nuance of that was ensconced with lush forests, and magical Chinese-style dragons flying through the air. The inhabitants even have colorful, translucent wings on their heads and back, and can even use magic, such as telekinesis, to bring and repel items. Our world, on the other hand, is a mix of modern and futuristic, as one would expect Japan to look (quite possibly in the not-too-distant future... minus the giant warp gate, of course.)
From an art direction standpoint, it was a visually stunning piece, no doubt. The animation was also well-done to a level that would be slightly above slice-of-life television anime. I only noticed a small hiccup towards the end when Rin began to run, as there wasn't much to indicate that she was picking up speed, which made her struggle to progress across the screen. That's the only thing that stuck out to me, as nothing else broke my suspension of disbelief.
As far as the audio goes, the music was simply enchanting. When you think of mystical worlds filled with wonder, you'll want to have a light orchestral sound to tie that all together and create that complete package. I think that baan accomplishes that very well. It is the type of score that you would expect from a feature film, as it just had that overall ambiance to it that meshed so well with the story and the scenery.
I did see that there were Japanese VAs credited; however, we received the English dub on Gigguk's channel, and English dubs are typically hit or miss for me. I know this is going to come down to individual taste and preference, but I can say that this English dub was decent at best.
As a disclaimer, I have misophonia, which means that certain sounds resonate with me in ways that can cause agitation, and Rin's voice was one of those sounds. That high-pitched voice was something I couldn't stand, so I found it rather unpleasant. Again, personal preference and all that, so I'm sure there are going to be a lot of defenders here, but I can only review my personal experience, and I did not enjoy Rin's voice at all.
Daichi is also someone with whom I had an issue, as there were some moments where his delivery was flat and almost emotionless. He needed some more tone and inflection to bring that character to life, and I felt as if it just wasn't there. I just feel that, in general, English voice acting in anime isn't very high-quality. This isn't a "subs are superior" argument, but when I see voice acting for some American animated shows and films, then compare them to anime, it oftentimes feels like anime dubs phone it in, or the characters are either portrayed too flatly or are too over-the-top. And I know that good English dubbing exists because I've seen fan-made abridged parodies with better English voice acting than official dubs.
Maybe my standards are too high when it comes to English voice acting, but the biggest negative about baan is that the dub didn't truly do anything to wow me.
Baan is a very simplistic story... the desire to start over because you believe that things would be better that way, but you slowly learn that you've just been running away from a problem that never existed. We've all been there before, so I think a lot of people can relate to that. Rather than present that common issue as a slice-of-life series, which, to be honest, would be the cop-out answer here, Gigguk decided to take a chance and wrap that common issue around a double isekai... both standard and reverse.
Of course, if this had more than eighteen minutes, we could have gotten more depth than what we received, but that's not to say that the anime short was shallow by any means. When you only have eighteen minutes to work with, there is the challenge of finding the right balance to tell the complete story that you sought to tell. I can say that baan did exactly that, which, again, must not have been an easy feat, so kudos to Gigguk and Studio Daisy for pulling that off, but while it did tell a complete story, it's pretty obvious where it could have used some fleshing out.
That's not a negative, mind you... That's a positive because it made me want to have more. Any time an anime short can make you feel that way, it either means that you want to see a full series born from it, or you mean it negatively because the short didn't do enough to entertain you at a level that meets your expectations. For baan, it is definitely the former and not the latter. I wanted more in a good way.
Eighteen minutes is not asking a lot of your time, so I would suggest that you spend it by giving it a watch. In fact, since it's on YouTube, I'll go ahead and do you the favor of linking it!