My Exercise
2020 · 3m · Japan
Directed by Atsushi Wada
Genres: animation, comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, surreal, whimsical
A boy does sit-ups with a dog standing over him; another dog runs across a boy's back as he bends forward — no dialogue, no explanation, just rhythm, breath, and bodies that don't quite sync.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most people watch a kid do sit-ups with dogs and see nothing — Wada sees the anti-narrative, the pure physical comedy of bodies refusing to cooperate, and just... commits to it. Genre-bending doesn't even apply here because there's no genre to bend; it's just absurdist muscle memory and breath.
The editing rhythm — how Wada cuts to the dogs' interruptions and the boy's persisting cycle — sits in conversation with a lineage of playful, formally rigorous animation that values timing over plot; it recalls the constraint-based humor of early experimental shorts without ever winking at the audience.
The singular choice here is sound design: Wada lets you hear every breath, every pant, every moment of physical strain, and the dogs become rhythm section rather than interruption — that commitment to the *audio* texture of exertion is what transforms a 3-minute premise into something genuinely disarming.