by Foster Harlfinger, Contributing Writer
Welcome to this month’s Animation Celebration, a series where we shine a light on underseen animated films that deserve some extra love.
After falling in love with animator Don Hertzfeld’s 2012 feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day last year, his science-fiction series, World of Tomorrow, has remained high on my watchlist ever since. Known for his simplistic hand-drawn animation style in which you can quite literally see the pencil strokes on screen, World of Tomorrow marks a departure for Hertzfeld as his first foray into digital animation. As of this review, there are three installments released in the World of Tomorrow series, though Hertzfeld has indicated that Episode Three won’t be his last.
World of Tomorrow (2015)
Four-year-old Emily — who we’ll refer to as Emily Prime — is contacted by a third-generation clone of herself from 227 years in the future. As we soon discover, people in the future have devised a means of extending their lifespan through the use of cloning technology. Emily Prime is hilariously voiced by Winona Mae, Hertzfeld’s unwittingly recorded niece, resulting in a perfectly chaotic energy that guides us through this unexpectedly complex short. At only 17 minutes long, Episode One tackles heavy themes with depth, nuance, and unexpected humor.
As Adult Emily (Julia Pott) brings her younger self on a tour of the future, we soon learn what a bleak existence awaits Emily Prime’s lineage. For all its technological advancements, including the internet’s chilling evolution into the Outernet, existence for Adult Emily and her fellow future-dwellers remains depressingly empty. “Sometimes, I sit in a chair late at night and quietly feel very bad,” Adult Emily confides in her perfectly monotonous tone, though she touchingly adds that she remains proud of her sadness, as it “means that I am more alive.” As their time together comes to a close, Emily Prime is informed that Earth is likely to end with the imminent impact of meteoroid in 60 days’ time, and suddenly the reason for her adult clone’s visit becomes clear. Adult Emily has journeyed across space and time to retrieve a forgotten memory from her childhood, the contents of which are revealed to be heartbreakingly simple: Emily and her mother, walking together.
For all its science-fiction jargon and witty lines of dialogue, Hertzfeld’s films remain dense with meaning. Seemingly innocuous lines hit you like a bullet, prompting a brief, five-second existential crisis before moving onto the next. The clones in Adult Emily’s world, much like those in our own, spend countless days hoping, preparing, and dreaming of a better future when they are not mourning the loss of days passed. “That is the thing about the present,” Adult Emily shares with her younger self. “You only appreciate it when it is the past… Now is the envy of all of the dead.”
World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (2017)
Acting as a perfect mirror to Episode One’s comparatively large-scale journey, Episode Two takes Emily Prime on a journey straight into the subconscious, this time accompanied by Emily 6. Unlike the Emily clone we meet in Episode One, Emily 6 is not a direct part of Emily’s line of clones. Rather, she is an incomplete backup clone in the event that something terrible were to happen to the primary Emily clone. Believing her own sense of identity to be lost for good, Emily 6 now returns to the source of her lineage with the intention of copying Emily Prime’s consciousness into her own.
Expanding on the lore of its universe in unexpected ways, it is difficult to imagine a more brilliant sequel for this unconventional new series. Through Hertzfeld’s decidedly more internal approach this time around, we are granted access to the Emilys’ deepest hopes, longings, and regrets. Emily 6 takes us through her aptly titled Bog of Realism and Valley of Buried Memories, while Emily Prime invites us into her far more joyful and anxiety-free Triangle Land. Hertzfeld’s specific sense of humor, as always, remains a highlight. My favorite line of the episode comes from Emily 6’s description of a character as having “the haircut of a man who seriously misinterpreted himself.”
As funny as this short often is, the complex themes it explores remain rich and plentiful. The film touches upon the internal conflict between wanting to revisit memories of a simpler time without missing out on the present. We empathize with Emily 6’s journey to accept the beautiful purity and simplicity of young minds without forgetting that “Youth is not an accomplishment.” Though I connect more with the first short due to its more focused narrative, there is no denying that Episode Two is a perfect expansion upon the original short film’s themes in every conceivable way.
World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (2020)
In an interesting turn, Episode Three narrows its focus on the journey of David Prime, the original source of a clone we meet in a brief but memorable section of Episode One. Coming in at 34 minutes long, this is Hertzfeld’s most narratively rich installment thus far. David Prime is struck by a memory of his childhood left behind by — you guessed it — one of Emily’s clones. Emily 9 informs David Prime that she and one of David’s future clones had fallen in love shortly before his tragic death. Emily 9 has since harvested future David’s memories in the hopes that David Prime might be able to retrieve them. The plot of Episode Three so drastically increases in complexity from the previous two entries that to summarize it here would be a fruitless exercise. For now, it is enough to say that David Prime embarks on a journey of discovery set to the sound of Emily 9’s comedic gold string of never-ending ramblings.
In listing the things that make her happy, Emily 9 starts simple enough with basic necessities like sunlight and water, before nonchalantly arriving at item 307 on her list: “Imagining the deaths of everyone who’s ever offended me.” Hertzfeld is brilliant at coming up with the most unexpectedly relatable scenarios imaginable. My favorite moment of the episode comes from Emily 9’s morbid confession to David Prime that she often fantasizes about seeing overhead spacecrafts explode so that she could be the one to describe the accident to investigators.
Laughs aside, it is the unexpected twists of Episode Three’s second half that catapult this to the top of my World of Tomorrow ranking. With its hilariously on-the-nose product advertisements (“Something wrong with your ugly face?”) and a genius time-travel storyline à la 12 Monkeys, this episode is something special. Should Hertzfeld release a fourth installment in this series, I have no doubt that he would knock it out of the park, but Episode Three’s goosebump-inducing final shot makes for a perfectly fitting end to this brilliant saga.
Hertzfeld’s animation remains a constant pleasure throughout each of the three episodes. There exists a beautiful contrast between the simple stick-figure animation of Hertzfeld’s characters and the increasingly complex, digitally-developed worlds they inhabit. Given the overwhelming level of narrative detail found in Hertzfeld’s world, I found myself needing to rewatch each World of Tomorrow installment before moving on to the next. With lesser films, such density would be an understandable frustration, but the opposite holds true here. Knowing that you could rewatch each episode one hundred times over while continuing to find new, profound takeaways each time makes the World of Tomorrow series as true an expression of art as one can find.
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