It’s hard to know from where, exactly, your next bit of inspiration will come. It could be from ingenious LEGO builds or new glimpses of the cosmos. Or even from a Chobani yogurt commercial, apparently, as the below short, “Dear Alice,” proves. Although the commercial does benefit from stellar animation. As well as a score by a Studio Ghibli composer.
THE LINE, a BAFTA nominated collective of designers, directors, and animators based in London, created the delightful animation. The company posted the animation to its YouTube channel in July 2021, although it’s only more recently gone viral. Solarpunk futurist Stephen Magee posted the video to Twitter, where it has, as of this writing, more than 1.8 million views.
The animation is brief, but tells a complete little story. We watch as the central character makes her way through a day in a beautiful, green future; one full of sparkling solar panels, content farm animals, floating windmill blimps, and, of course, a bunch of robots.
As the character performs her daily duties she quotes a letter to “Alice,” which discusses the kind of future and business she should try to build. “Our job is to plant seeds so our grandkids get to enjoy the fruit,” the letter reads. Simultaneously we watch as our hero deploys weather-altering machines to help water crops. And use some kind of Doc Ock-like fruit-picking robot to pluck apples off trees.
Toward the end of the short it’s revealed that Alice is indeed the grower-producer we’ve been watching the whole time. (As opposed to her daughter, who also could’ve been Alice.) And the letter to her is from her own grandmother. It’s a sweet moment, made all the sweeter by long-time Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi’s score. It also, oddly, puts us in the mood for juice more than yogurt? As long as it’s squeezed with love we think Chobani would be cool with that, though.