Shelter: The Six Minute Anime Short That Will Always Make You Cry

We're not sure if the friendly duo of electronic music producer Porter Robinson and French musician Madeon set out to deplete the world's supply of tissues when they teamed up with Japanese anime studio A-1 Pictures and Crunchyroll to make hit anime short-music video hybrid for the song "Shelter", but there's definitely been some collateral damage of the tissue kind.

Porter tells The Japan Times that he's actually very invested in Japanese animation, and that “if I could convert 100,000 people worldwide into anime fans, I feel like it would really make an impact.” The video debuted on a billboard in Tokyo in October, and only needs six minutes to make something really moving. While describing it in too much detail would ruin some of the emotional impact, here is a simple rundown of the plot.

Shelter tells the story of Rin, a 17-year-old girl who lives her life inside of a futuristic simulation completely by herself in infinite, beautiful loneliness. Each day, Rin awakens in virtual reality and uses a tablet which controls the simulation to create a new, different, beautiful world for herself. Until one day, everything changes, and Rin comes to learn the true origins behind her life inside a simulation.

After you were born, there was far too little time left. I wonder just how much love I was able to show you after your mother passed away…seeing you cheerful gave me courage, though.

If you've seen the video, here's a translation of the message Rin receives from her father after the reveal.

I really wish I could have gone together with you, but I wasn’t able to. I wanted you to be able to forget everything and move forward…knowing you, you’ll be ok. Someday you’ll surely realize your loneliness, and you’ll remember me.

I believe you’ll grow strong and read these words. I really wish we had made more memories together. I’m sorry. You were little, so you probably didn’t understand back then, but now I’m sure you do. I’ll repeat the words from that day once again.

By - grape Japan editorial staff.