PAC-MAN: Circle

All previous episodes of Secret Level varied from just tepid and uninspired to actually bad and confusing. Videogame aesthetics seemed poor for animated short films, and the script was always too shallow. I suspected that perhaps they worked a little better for game addicts, as I had no involvement with any of those five games (I have been playing D&D for decades, but on table with friends, not in videogame, and it is completely different). Then, Pac-Man episode came up, and off course I love that game - just like possibly the whole humankind! I am not happy to say: that was a great disappointment. A revisionist approach is probably not the best one for a beloved classic game, but it could still work. However, it is very hard to identify the game in this short film, despite the very end. Animation is also unpleasant and has a generic style with no connection to the game. Indeed, this episode reminded me more the dire horror unofficial Z-feature movies that are being released with characters now in public domain, such as Mickey Mouse and Pooh. That is not a compliment, to be clear.

Stuck in an "endless labyrinth, haunted by hungry ghosts", the chosen must "eat or be eaten" and escape the maze.

Using the premise of PAC-MAN, the studio delivers an inventive and quite creative perspective on what has become quite a colorful franchise (can't get his most recent appearance in Smash Brothers out of my head). I applaud them for the effort, but I imagined this might be the one that would not fit the mold of what they expected to deliver.

Whether you think the taken liberties align to your preferences or not, this 10-ish minute episode provides little in the way of satisfactory narrative or take-aways.

Hmm, I'm all for an interpretation of a concept as much as the next guy. But this was a swing and a miss. It felt like it's own thing that they just added on references to Pac-Man seemingly after they'd already come up with something. It all just feels a bit too tacked on.

A better idea would have been to actually have the ghosts be chasing him through the "maze" But these things are t even ghosts. They are monsters with glowing things in their heads and they only show at the "end of the maze" It would have made more sense to have him run around the maze trying to collect something only to find that the maze is never ending and it just resets after he's gotten it all... Or hell if you must have the eat or be eaten thing.. make him a zombie whose skin has gone jaundice and his mouth is always opening and shutting.. (just like pacmans yellow pukka pukka look but grosser) So many good ideas can come from the abstractness of the game ... and still actually be closer to the concept than what this was.

A real shame.

I never expect anything from the storytelling from these anthology series. In my personal opinion, animated anthology shows like Secret Level should primarily be watched for their animation. While the narratives can vary in quality, the true magic lies in the artistry and creativity each episode brings to life. The Pac-Man episode excels in this regard, delivering a visual feast that proves the potential of animation as a medium. That's also the reason why i would never give an episode with Hyper-Realistic animation a high rating: Hyper-realistic styles can be so fixated on mimicking reality that they forget to innovate, explore surrealism, or push boundaries in ways only animation can.

For anyone passionate about animation, this episode is a must-watch-a reminder of why the art form deserves our undivided attention.

That said, it's truly obnoxious how some people complain that it's "nothing like the video game." Of course, it's not the same! The purpose of reimagining something in an anthology series isn't to copy and paste the source material-it's to take creative liberties and explore new possibilities.

Altough many were criticizing this episode, even well before the release, due to how this takes such a different path from the original videogame, I found it to be quite interesting and I actually appreciated that they took such a risk on this episode.

This episode takes the core of the classic Pac-Man game and manages to write a whole lore around it, while still including and referencing parts from the original. I thought the ideas and the overall excecution here were excellent!

While most things here are completely fresh, I found it to be interesting enough to keep me engaged throughout the short runtime. And the way parts of the original game were implemented into this episode was just so creative and actually fun to spot.

However, I think the biggest flaw with this episode is that altough they managed to create something brand new around such a simple game, it still falls into a few clichés that we have seen many times before. Still, overall, this was an excellent and well-crafted episode.