An alluring siren covered in gold and jewels drives knights and priests to their deaths with her song, but becomes fascinated with a deaf knight, Jibaro, when her charms don't immediately work on him.
Written and directed by Alberto Mielgo.
Tropes:
- 24-Hour Armor: Jibaro sleeps overnight while still wearing his full-body plate armor.
- All There in the Script: The deaf knight is named Jibaro, and the siren is referred to as Golden Woman.
- Ambiguously Evil: The Golden Woman. At the beginning of the episode, she targets the group of Knights Jibaro was traveling with after Jibaro accidentally drew her attention, with it being unclear whether she did so because she felt threatened by their presence or simply because it's in her nature to kill any passerby. As well, the Wham Shot at the end of the episode shows that she's done this to possibly hundreds of other victims before, and their bodies and skeletons were littered at the bottom of the lake. Having said that, when she sees Jibaro is unaffected by her "song," she instead attempts to seduce him rather than murder him.
- Aside Glance: While Jibaro sleeps, The Golden Woman cuddles up to him. She keeps staring at the camera the whole time.
- Attempted Rape: Despite Jibaro's discomfort and his attempts to fight off her aggressive advances, the Golden Woman throws herself on top of him until he gains the upper hand and knocks her unconscious after lulling her into a false sense of security.
- Bedmate Reveal: When Jibaro wakes up he is surprised to find the siren by his side.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The lake turns light red from all the hacking the knights did to each other before perishing. Then it's put up to eleven after the Golden Woman apparently dies, as all the rivers connected to the lake turn into deep, crimson red. Upstream.
- Broken Angel: Once Jibaro strips the gold off of the Golden Woman, she looks broken and beaten, going from beautiful and dangerous to wounded and sympathetic. Later on when she is resurrected she looks absolutely crushed by what he did to her, and her siren calls are also weaker— but not so weak that she can't get her revenge.
- Brought Down to Normal: Downplayed. After most of the gold is looted out of her and her being close to dying, the powers of the Golden Woman are severely limited. She still managed to muster enough of her voice to enthrall Jibaro.
- Compelling Voice: The Golden Woman's eerie screeching wail forces anyone who hears it into involuntary dance and compelled forward motion, leaving the victims to drown in the deeper waters further into her lake.
- Death by Materialism: Jibaro could have lived if it wasn't for his lust for gold that made him antagonize the siren.
- Deranged Animation: Similar to The Witness, which was done by the same studio. There is a lot of choppy, fast "editing", while the animation itself jumps to bizarre close-ups and shifting points of view. And then there is the scene of the death dance of the compelled knights, where all of this is combined with characters moving in jerky, awkward moves, while striking ballet poses and hacking each other to death. If all of this wasn't enough, the short has no dialogue and the soundtrack is a techno-fusion mix, further adding to just how plain weird everything is.
- Disability Immunity: The main character is deaf. As such, he can't be affected by the destructive voice of the siren. Until closer to the end of the story, that is.
- Destructive Romance: The 'romance' between Jibaro and The Golden Woman ends with him dying and her severely wounded.
- Downer Ending: The Golden Woman drowns Jibaro and will either die herself from the injuries he caused her or will simply be too broken by what Jibaro had done to her to carry on.
- Enthralling Siren: The Golden Woman is a mysterious lady covered in gold and jewelry who resides in a lake. She drives men to carnage and eventual death with her eerie wails.
- Establishing Character Moment: Jibaro gets one near the beginning when he spots a nugget of gold in the lake, snatches it up to check it, then furtively looks around to see if anyone else saw him find it. This handily establishes his greed, which later drives his actions toward the siren.
- Evil Versus Evil: On one hand you have a siren who wantonly kills knights. On the other hand, the deaf knight is greedy and brutally mutilates her (while understandable, since he saw her kill lots of people, is still framed as wrong).
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Golden Woman is covered in gold and jewelry. Even her face is an elaborate mask. It all seems to be part of her body, like the outer layer of skin, given she bleeds whenever it is removed.
- False Camera Effects: Despite being fully animated short, the "camera" gets smudged with blood a couple of times. There are also night shots that look like there's a light mounted on the camera, like Fiona Apple's "Criminal" music video
. - First Time Feeling: After Jibaro strips the Golden Woman's gold, he drinks the bloody water and gains his hearing. He freaks out and becomes vulnerable to her voice.
- Genre Blindness: Jibaro doesn't actually make sure he killed the Woman before he skins her. This leads to his death at the end of the episode, as she enacts revenge on him.
- Gold Fever: The knights are probably just guilty of regular greed, but they are driven to raving, self-destructive madness by the Golden Woman's siren song, which could easily be read as a metaphor for Gold Fever.
- Greed: While Jibaro's greed is only hinted at towards the beginning of the episode when he finds a gold nugget and hides it from the rest of the knights, it becomes evident when he decides to pursue the siren after realizing she's covered from head to toe in treasure.
- Hemo Erotic: The Golden Woman is covered in solid gold fish scales clothes that are razor-sharp and tend to get lodged into flesh. When she starts kissing Jibaro, it shows her lips are covered in ruby red jewels that are also razor-sharp, and he starts bleeding from the mouth soon after as they make out.
- Howl of Sorrow: The Golden Woman lays belts out a wail of grief after she wakes up from Jibaro's beating and sees all her gold is gone.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: The siren at the center of the story becomes intrigued by Jibaro, because his deafness makes him more or less immune to her Compelling Voice. She follows him and even sleeps beside him.
- Involuntary Dance: Anyone who hears the screams of the Golden Woman is forced into a frenzied, uncoordinated dance, until they die or are killed.
- Ironic Name: Jíbaro is a Puerto Rican term for self-subsisting farmers who use traditional farming methods. Ironically, the knight named Jibaro is a greedy colonizer all too willing to "pillage" the Golden Woman.
- Laser-Guided Karma: How does the Golden Woman repay the knight whose deafness made him so fascinating, and who then stripped her of her gold and left her for dead? By making him not deaf, and thus as susceptible to her song as anyone else.
- Left for Dead: Jibaro tossing the siren's body back into the water, without even checking if she was actually dead or, for that matter, killing her in the first place. This allows her to recover and, ultimately, exact her revenge. Although, to his credit, being made able to hear is not something he could have foreseen.
- Logical Weakness: Compelling Voice can't work on someone who can't hear it. The Golden Woman eventually finds a workaround for this.
- Low Clearance: Jibaro is so scared, he just keeps rushing his horse, until the trunk of a fallen tree knocks him out of the saddle.
- Medieval European Fantasy: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, it's a story with knights wearing plate armor and charging on caparison-clad horses, while fighting (or at least trying to) a siren in a virgin, deciduous forest. On the other, everyone is Ambiguously Brown and the Golden Woman herself is clearly inspired by South Asian cultures, both in the design of her clothes and even the dance she performs. The unusual combination might suggest the knights are conquistadors in South America, giving the story a hint of El Dorado folklore. The woman also draws from Slavic Mythology, particularly creatures like the Sirin.
- No-Dialogue Episode: Not a single word is said during the whole short.
- Our Sirens Are Different: The Golden Woman is identified as a siren in side materials, and draws some inspiration from siren counterparts in Slavic Mythology.
- Perspective Flip: So there are brave knights to slay a dangerous monster, yay... oh, they are a bunch of greedy looters, just in it for the riches the monster is made of.
- Rape as Drama: While not explicitly a SEXUAL violation, Jibaro's assault on the Golden Woman and ripping the gold off her is pretty much a metaphor for it. She reacts accordingly. Her moves on him were outright sexual assault.
- Rivers of Blood: The Golden Woman makes the river water turn red.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When she turns out to not be dead, The Golden Woman is horrified, heartbroken and angry at Jibaro for stealing the gold from her body, and, with his hearing granted from drinking the river water, she lets out an anguished Howl of Sorrow that drives him to his death.
- Scenery Porn: The backgrounds team REALLY flexed their nature scenery skills in this episode, all in the director's signature hand-painted style.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The main character turns tail after witnessing the carnage that happened to the other knights.
- Sensory Overload: Jibaro gets granted hearing near the end. Given his reaction, it's the first time he's heard anything.
- Sirens Are Mermaids: Downplayed. The Golden Woman does have fish scales, but they are made of gold and she is otherwise not very fish-like.
- Scary Teeth: The Golden Woman has shark-like teeth.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Despite being a story with knights and sirens, the soundtrack is a drum-heavy techno-fusion mix. To which the Golden Woman performs a modern take on bharatnatyam dance, no less.
- Super-Scream: The siren's cry seems to also have a physically destructive element.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: Notably, it switches by the mid-point of the short, Æon Flux-style. First we start with Jibaro, a traumatized knight that uses his disability to successfully fight against a murderous siren, the Golden Woman. The way she seduces Jibaro reads like sexual assault; Jibaro freaks out (because her ruby lips badly cut his mouth) and pushes back, and she ignores it and licks her lips. After Jibaro beats her, the perspective switches to the Golden Woman, who is presented as the victim of a greedy looter, up to portraying the whole thing as a rape-like experience. The story itself deliberately doesn't take a solid stance, leaving it open who, if anyone, was a hero or a victim in the story.
- Tasty Gold: Early on when finding the nugget of gold in the water, Jibaro takes it into his mouth to check its authenticity.
- Tragedy: The director calls the short this, and likens it to a "toxic relationship".
- Uncertain Doom: It is left open if the Golden Woman is dying, permanently limited in her powers or will eventually heal.
- Use Your Head: Jibaro knocks out the Golden Woman with his forehead.
- Villain Protagonist: The knights aren't there to save anyone - they are there for the gold the creature is covered in. This even extends to Jibaro, who is the point of view character for almost the entire short and ultimately meets his death over greed, rather than running away or at least making sure he actually killed the siren.
- Walk on Water: The Golden Woman is capable of doing this, with water barely reaching her ankles, despite the lake being deep enough to easily drown in it.
