I think a lot of media has a tendency to misrepresent love. It’s portrayed as this spontaneous, irrational feeling that you know when you feel it, but I think this is wrong. It may start out this way, but I think true, hardened love is only formed when you recognize that that which you love isn’t perfect and that you don’t care anyway. That’s how I feel about Porter Robinson’s 2016 short film *Shelter,* and I’m here to explain why…
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**2016 Was How Many Years Ago?!**
Is it still controversial to call *Shelter* an anime like it was back then? Given this subs history and the fact I got scolded for calling *Link Click* one of the anime of 2021 (let alone one of the best) maybe it still is, but anyway…
For those who don’t know *Shelter* is a 2016 short film produced by musician Porter Robinson in collaboration with Crunchyroll and A1-Pictures, which you can watch [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzQ6gRAEoy0). It follows the story of Rin, a girl in a simulation who has to power to make everything and anything with a magic tablet. I’m not gonna go much further, since the whole thing is only six minutes long and you can go watch it yourself.
2016 was the year when anime’s future felt optimistically global. The success of *Your Name* catapulted anime back into the mainstream (not to mention the likes of *One Punch Man*, *Attack on Titan*, and the like from years prior), the Crunchyroll Awards were right on the horizon, and for a younger me who had newly awakened aspirations to make his own anime, *Shelter* couldn’t have come out at a better time. To me, it stood as a (albeit misplaced) hope that I could one day to the same. Wasn’t crazy about the song, but who cares?
That’s how it stood for years. My first 3×3 featured *Shelter* prominently and you couldn’t convince me to remove it. However, as time passed, my circumstances changed. I entered that “critic” phase where I started to question all my favorites and let the voices of others affect it too much. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t seen too many other anime music videos, but by 2019 I was wavering in my resolve and eventually dropped it off my Favorites list in favor of more “acceptable” options. So that was that.
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**Rekindling my Passion**
Flash forward a few months, and I ended up revisiting *Shelter* in the summer of 2020. I don’t remember the exact reason why, maybe just for nostalgic purposes, but what I found ended up changing my life forever.
I had originally assumed that *Shelter* (the song) was from Rin’s perspective. I mean, she is the main feature of the video after all. However, when I dug into the lyrics, I realized the person singing wasn’t Rin; it was her father. Here me out. *Shelter,* in totality, is a story about generational purpose and parenthood. The song is from the perspective of a parent talking to their own parents and having some sort of… epiphany. It talks of carrying along legacy and realizing that they’re now tasked with providing to their own child the love and devotion that their parents had provided to them. In its second verse, our unknown narrator peers even further into the future and contemplates a future where him and his parents are once again united (in death) and their very existence has been forgotten sub their descendants who may not “know our names or our faces” but who “carry on for us” despite it. It is the generational legacy passed on from parent to child and how those in the present are backed by the memory of all those who came before them. While this could theoretically by from Rin’s perspective, I don’t think it quite lines up. Rin’s isolation and spoilers things pin her as the last of her bloodline (at least for now). She doesn’t have any children to reflect over, and so it instead makes more sense that the song is from the perspective of the only other character we see: Rin’s unnamed father. In a way, *Shelter* can be seen as a song to Rin from her father to remind her in the darkest of times to remember that she isn’t truly alone (an insight reenforced by the dialogue at the end of the short). So yeah, that’s *Shelter*.
and something about all of that just hit different for me. At the time I was still fairly depressed and purposeless. Yet, something about *Shelter* just made me feel… calm. As someone who has always struggled with feeling small and insignificant, the realization that I am inherently part of a larger chain and have to do my part to see its continuation has given me a new passion and drive that I wouldn’t have if I never cracked *Shelter* in the first place.
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**A Final Reflection as I Begin my Next Chapter…**
It’s been almost three years since then. In a couple weeks, I graduate college and in reflecting on these last four years I come back to *Shelter*. It’s given me the confidence to hand off everything I’ve done thus far to the next generation of students, and optimism for the uncertain future. I know that I’ve played my part here and can move on confidently to my next stage in life where I’ll take up a new chain and craft my own link in it.
Is *Shelter* perfect? No.
Do I care? No.
It’s one of the few anime I can confidently say keeps on giving. Starting as a beacon of hope for a younger me uncertain on how to pursue his passions, it’s evolved into a reminder that I’m never truly alone and can move forward confident that someone will always be looking out for me.
Even if their names and face elude me.
[Rin is also very adorable, so there’s that lol.](https://preview.redd.it/6no9jneexqva1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=ac7a754eb37428b5744e6c2c262a9a11121260c1)
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