A two-minute run-time doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for building intrigue, but Deji Meets Girl really packs a punch within those constraints. These seemingly random events have no ‘observable cause’ (looking at you, Ichirou) and disappear as quickly as they appear, quite literally in the blink of an eye. One moment Maise and Ichirou are chatting at the front desk, the next they’re floating around an aquatic seascape with a magical goldfish and then, Poof! Back to reality with the general public none the wiser. These quick little inexplicable phenomena just keep prodding our curiosity and we can’t wait to see what lies in store for Ichirou and Maise next!

Maise and Ichirou seem to be in for a strange and frankly exhausting summer. However, as these two scratch their heads over their new fantastical reality, we can’t help but be left in awe over the charm of this new world. Beautifully composed scenes of never-ending sunsets, trees winding up buildings and schools of fish swimming overhead are fluidly brought to life in vibrant yet soft summer colours, leaving us wishing and wanting to jump into the thick of all this Okinawa strangeness!

Some anime benefit from full-length episodes, some benefit from being shorts. A lot of the time, anime can have people losing interest with filler content. Luckily, Deji Meets Girl doesn’t have that problem. With a short run-time of two minutes, this show packs a punch. But what can a show accomplish in two minutes? Well, in this case, it makes all the oddities in Okinawa seem all the more bizarre with how fleetingly they appear and it establishes the fun banter and dynamic of our two main characters. In fact, the run-time just heightens the peculiarities of the incidents and makes the character dynamics all the more punchy, creating a solid balance between mystery and comedy in this slice-of-life.

Unfortunately, those two minutes can be a double-edged sword. While a well-executed short often leaves little to be desired, we’re not sure if the same applies to Deji Meets Girl. In terms of animation and art, Studio Liden doesn’t appear to have held back in creating a stunning world for us to explore (is anyone else getting Aquatope vibes?), but the storyline leaves us wanting. The randomness in this fantastical slice-of-life is well-conceived but we can’t help wishing it ran a little longer because, while those two minutes are enough to suck us in, we’re forced back into reality rather abruptly when we’d rather stay submerged with Maise and Ichirou. The inexplicable series of weird events really do bank well with the ambiguity of limited time, however, sometimes it’s hard to piece together all the facets of the story without feeling rushed. Plus, these zany situations and character dynamics all seem to point to a really interesting story which could have the potential to be just as captivating at full-length (hint, hint, Studio Liden).