Beginning of Summer (2021)

Gorgeous visuals make up for everything.

If you read "set within the universe of the martial arts MMORPG Justice Online" in the description and worried that you were missing important context, fear not!

I have never played Justice Online - and I hear that it's a premium only game anyway - but if you've played one wuxia-themed MMORPG before you get the basic idea. It is an eye-catching world of fantasy and martial arts, where the characters belong to sects that compete in trials/competitions and train to be the very best so that they may one day be harbingers of justice.

Fortunately, you don't need to know anything about Justice Online or the novel it is based on to get swept up in the atmosphere of this short story. Instead, you can sit back and treat yourself to a collection of scenes where a student and her teacher bicker about anything and everything. The dialogue seems to hint at some kind of emotional love triangle with another character that isn't featured - perhaps a reference to an NPC or an in-game mechanic, but it didn't affect the narrative beyond piquing my curiosity a bit.

Overall, the hair and costumes are immaculate, making this non-story worth every second of screen time and honestly I would recommend it for that alone. The short film itself has the same energy as a fan project and I can't help the nostalgia it gives me for the days when I enjoyed playing games like this with my friends.

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