It hands you a body part nobody wants and dares you not to love it. Kazuna Okada's Tama Art University graduation film runs on a poem she wrote herself, and the whole thing moves in that rhythm: nobody really likes her, they even wish her to be gone, she is in everywhere, little sad sweetheart. That repetition does the work a hundred minutes of plot usually can't, turning a chubby belly into a character you feel protective of by the end. The animation is small and warm and letter-like, closer to something scrawled and mailed to you than anything storyboarded for spectacle. There's no arc, no conflict, no payoff beyond the last wish to cuddle the thing everyone else wants gone. Watch it once and you'll catch yourself being kinder to your own reflection, which is a strange thing for a student short to pull off.

Very Chubby Belly is a film made as Kazuna Okada's 2024 graduation work at Tama Art University. It is built on a short poem Okada wrote about the title character, a sad little darling whom nobody really likes, whom some would even prefer to see gone, and who seems to turn up everywhere. Against that rejection, the poem's speaker wants to hold her close and give her plenty of love. Okada renders this in small, warm animation with a look that resembles a letter.