I like the idea, but damn if the execution hasn’t been lacking. My own reading was that the winter scenes were imagined from the kids’ point of view, but it’s definitely vague enough to go either way - and that’s a real failure on the creator’s part.
(I wish we had gotten Automata)
I always thought it was a re-enactment, a story poem played as a game. It’s just that in their world, death is fairly common for boys so it might be about a boys’ hunt or about an old hunt.
The salient detail that indicates the winter scenes are imagined is that the boys are wearing the same uniforms. It hardly seems likely they’d be outfitted in winter with short pants, brown shirts, and bright green cloaks.
I liked the story a lot, but felt the poetry was really lacking. It didn’t explain well enough, even if it’s supposed to be a children’s rhyme.
I respectfully disagree: I think the ambiguity (about whether the winter scene is imagined or real) is a success on the creator’s part.
My complaint is that we never see the flag-football flags on any characters until the end, so we have too much work to figure out what they mean.