Pear cider and cigarettes is a short 35-minute animated film by Robert valley, a Canadian animator known for his work on Love Death and Robots, as well as Tron. The film is free to watch on the streaming platform YouTube, on the official Robert valley channel.

the film follows the life of a character named techno all narrated through the POV of a close friend of techno, the two became friends over odd circumstances due to both being equally opposites in skill and personality. Techno is described as a teenage rebel almost or someone who was so daring he made the impossible seem possible, while the narrator describes himself as the opposite: Fearful, plays it safe, a cop even.

Eventually techno’s life leads him to drinking, smoking, and reckless driving, this inevitably ends up in him not only having a singular accident but multiple, losing toes, and nearly fully disabled after 2 full years of recovery.

He then had contracted Hep-C from the hospital due to contaminated blood which he then sued the hospital over, gaining 1.5 million dollars as payment. This large amount of money at such a young age had been a massive contributor to the downfall he’d have later in life.

Starting with the fallout he’d have with his closest friends, he began drinking heaver then before, asking for money, even smoking cigarettes off the road whenever he could at an alarming rate

Eventually the characters break apart from each other for a few years, uncertain of what’s going in with techno until he gets a letter from techno’s father to help him to get his son to stop drinking in order to get surgery for liver replacement. And so began a 2 year process of getting techno to relinquish his addictive habits so he could get out of Japan and get his surgery. He eventually does only to die 4 months later due to complications.

The message of the movie I believe, is about reaching your peak in life too early, burning out of passion in life before it even fully begins. After watching it many times it quickly became my favorite movie, with amazing visuals and amazing storytelling and an amazing soundtrack to go along with it all, a soundtrack consisting of the likes of Black sabbath, Cypress hill, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Nightmares on wax. I highly recommend watching the movie as it is one of the best animated films I’ve seen, simply because it is perfect at what it does.