Although it is a sci-fi film, it allows me to see more humanity, warmth, time, loneliness, sadness... A small town built on a "ring" seems to have no connection with the outside world. The people of the town are related to each other, but also have their own stories.
The story of the first episode begins with a little girl who travels through, who unexpectedly came to the future to help her little boy, who is her future child. Sounds amazing. The little boy's mother works in "Ring" and is so busy with work that she has no time to accompany the little boy. The little girl said "she doesn't want to be a mother". Yes, everyone is not born to be a parent.
The protagonist of the second episode is the little boy's older brother. He and his best buddies go to school and play together every day. Until one day, they saw a strange sphere in the woods. Entering the sphere, they can exchange consciousness. His buddy's family background is not good, and he is temporarily obsessed, and he doesn't want to change it again. When the little boy's brother was lost, he went to the woods alone and changed his consciousness into a robot.
The third episode is my favorite. The Asian girl that the little boy's brother has a crush on, likes to research and repair machines. Picked up a machine that can stop time in the river one day. She repaired the machine, was with an Asian boy, and loved each other in the still time. They went to tease passers-by on the street together, picked clothes together, and even XXOO on the street together. The girl taught him to say "I I love you"...just the two of them, so free and so happy. Girls look brave, confident and energetic, but they are actually afraid of being alone. The boy said that he will always be with her. These words seem to be a flag for the future. The machine was broken and time could not start. The boy said nervously: I am trapped here. The two began to have conflicts, began to quarrel, and began to attack each other... The boy took off his bracelet and left the girl himself in the long river of time, and he himself entered the time that stopped. When she said "I need you", there was still expectation, but when I saw the bracelet that the boy took off, I felt that the girl fell into endless loneliness and disappointment. She fixed the machine and everything was back to normal. Until one day, the two met on a street corner, and the girl's sentence "You broke your promise" was only exchanged for the boy's indifferent sentence "Do whatever you want". At this time, even if the boy said "I love you" in Chinese again, the girl still walked away without looking back. Maybe this is what love looks like.
The fourth episode talks about the little boy's grandfather, taking him to a spherical device to shout, the echo can represent a person's lifespan. The little boy's echo was very long, but there was no response to the grandfather's shouting. Grandpa's life is coming to an end. The relationship between the grandfather and the grandson is very good. The little boy has a hard time accepting the fact of death. What is even more sad is that the grandfather did not remember him before he died. People's life, old age, sickness and death are often so helpless, no one can control them.
The fifth episode turned the camera to the boy family who switched consciousness with the robot and became a vegetative person. The condition of the boy's family is not good, and his father also rushes to make a living every day. Recently, there have been frequent thieves. He bought a robot with an advance salary, and did not sleep at night to protect his family. The deaf-mute sister in the family knew that the vegetative person lying on the hospital bed was not her brother, but no one in the family believed her. The thief was the older brother who had changed his body and came home to see his younger sister. Everything is developing in a more grooved direction. The father, who tried his best to protect his family, was becoming less and less understood by everyone. Everyone may be looking for themselves irreversibly in the long river of time.
Episode 6 starts with the doorman at the "Ring" company gate. He found a photo on a machine that appeared out of nowhere, and the man in the photo made him fall in love at first sight. The moment the machine was repaired and started, he was teleported to another time and space, where there was another self, living a happy life with the man in the photo. He just broke in like this, looking at the man who was thinking about it every day, and finally couldn't help confessing to that man, but waited for another question from himself. Love may be like this, two people can have the whole world, but can't hold a third person.
The seventh episode tells about the little boy's father's robotic arm. When he was a child, he was bullied by his friends and left on an isolated island, where he was bitten by a water snake. Then he met the monsters on the island, and when he came back, his arm was amputated and a robotic arm was installed. But the story is far from simple, the monster on the island is the first robot made by grandpa. Because it is not perfect, it is afraid of being hurt by humans, so it is left on an island to live alone away from the crowd. Years later, my father knew the truth, went to the island again, reconciled with the robot, and untied the knot of his childhood shadow.
In the last episode, the little boy learns that the robot in the woods is his elder brother. He runs to the woods to find his elder brother, but his elder brother died fighting another robot in order to protect him. The little boy crossed the small river in the woods, and when he crossed it, it was frozen in ice, and when he crossed it back, it was running water, which may imply the long river of time throughout. When the boy returned to the city, his grandmother and father had passed away, and his mother had grown old. The only thing that hasn't changed is the teacher at his school. It turns out that his teacher is the second robot made by his grandfather.
The whole story, the rhythm is very slow, although it seems a little anxious, but the story is worth thinking about. Behind the stories packed with sci-fi elements such as time still, time travel, parallel space, etc., there is always a truth. In the long river of time, human beings are actually very small, and they cannot escape the palm of fate in their entire lives.
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