Sometimes, friendship can give birth to an entire universe. Literally. The animation ‘The Little Bang‘ created by Jihyeon Bae transposes at a cosmic level the human-specific emotional kinetics, interpreting the universal balance, the invisible forces ensuring the trajectory of the astral bodies within infinite space, through a tender metaphor about friendship. Without being an astronomy lesson, this project is based on a series of “scientific” principles providing the profile of an animation that can be used at any time as an attractive and intelligent teaching material. Obviously, this trait doesn’t diminish its aesthetic quality; on the contrary, it has the potential to attract a wide category of spectators, regardless of their expectations. Thus, the director maintains a well-mastered balance between the slightly naive colourful interface intended for a young audience and the information consistency needed to captivate a mature audience.
Isolated from the rest of the planets that have been blessed with asteroid-friends, a star tries to find a soul mate to share their long existence with. Maybe the young star who was just born nearby will be able to compensate for this emotional vacuum? But what are the costs of a friendship between two stars that get too close to one another?
Avoiding dialogue as a basis for the narrative approach, Jihyeon Bae believes that the image itself may be suggestive enough to replace the word as the supreme form of expression. Fortunately, this formula is extremely successful. Thus, the “cosmic” characters respect a series of recognizable typologies whose odyssey follows the path of a fairy tale that evolves according to all conventional principles, against the backdrop of a perfect chromatic-musical harmony. Without being a simplistic project, the simplicity is, in fact, the main feature that ensures the magnetism of this animation, keeping unaltered the humane message of the storyline. While avoiding a complex narrative strategy that could have compromised the elegance and tenderness of this astronomical friendship, ‘The Little Bang’ should be included in the category of animations that not only attract a lot of viewers, regardless of their taste and age, but are also “clean”, tender, and lacking ostentation.
