There are many ways you could interpret this film, about a man desperately searching for a cream to cure his itch. But for me, I look at this story as an allegory about anxiety and depression, two themes that are very present in my reality.

The film shows anxiety as an itch in the chest: a sharp pain that, the more one tries to fight, the more intense it becomes. Eventually, anxiety, itching, becomes so overwhelming and uncontrollable that you reach a point of total surrender. Unable to continue fighting.  Depression.

My goal with this film is to delve deeper into this idea. To visually represent these themes using the destruction of our protagonist's physical body, and how he does that to himself.  Our main character, Lucas, must initially start as an adult, and be brought so far into the depths of his anxiety that he regresses to his fetal state, teaching him the wrong lesson: that life is too difficult to fight on your own.

With "PIKA!" I hope to introduce a new metaphor that helps us understand the vicious cycle of anxiety and depression, and how we let it tear us apart from the inside out.