Perhaps it’s a matter of cultural differences, but anime
movies tend to follow similar patterns with me every time I watch one: an
intriguing premise that gets me hooked into watching in the first place, a
really great world-building, character-establishing first act, and then a
middling second portion followed by a finale that fails to capitalize on the
beginnings successes and doesn’t do much more than leave me a bit confused
regarding what the narrative was trying to tell me. There have been plenty of
exceptions (Jin-Ro, Princess Monoke) but unfortunately Origins: Spirit of the
Past was not among them.
The film opens as only an anime film can by having forest
dragons explode out of the moon and come crashing down to earth like meteors
accompanied by pretty Japanese vocals. These space forest dragon spirits (Don’t
expect an explanation, because one really isn’t given.) bring about a green
apocalypse that destroys modern society and leaves isolated human settlements
struggling to co-exist alongside the hostile forest. As anime goes it’s a
perfectly good set-up and I really enjoyed the world building that went into
the first half of the movie. Desert wasteland apocalypses are overdone and
Origin’s panoramic views of shattered, overgrown cityscapes were some of the
best parts of the movie. I didn’t even mind the nature spirits who seemed to
embody the spirit of the forest, even though they never really were explained
in any discernable manner.
The thrust of the film’s action centers around protagonist
Agito’s discovery of Toola, a girl from the destroyed past who has been
preserved in stasis in some sort of bunker buried beneath Neutral City, Agito’s
hometown. A lot of Origin’s successful world building was accomplished through Toola’s
eyes, and I thought it did a great job of presenting her reaction to emerging
to find the world she knew broken and changed. Unfortunately, most of the
supporting characters introduced in Neutral City turn out to be a bit
superfluous as they are all left behind once Toola is recruited by the
militaristic Ragna faction and Agito goes off in pursuit.
Again, the world building with the Ragna—who have maintained
a high level of industrialization and technology at the expense of their
connection to the earth—was very well done. The conflicting ideologies between
Ragna and Neutral City are nothing new in the anime medium: one culture wants
to coexist with the natural world while another one militarizes itself in order
to dominate it. It’s an interesting conflict, to be sure, especially in Origin’s
post-apocalyptic environment. Neutral City is content to deal with the world as
it is, suffering the whims of the forest spirits, while the Ragna arm
themselves—taking up arms against a sea of troubles, if you will—in order to
fight back against the forest’s influence. Unfortunately, this conflict wasn’t
given the amount of attention it deserved (the Ragna have polluted the air to
the point that they have to wear breath masks outside, so I guess that’s some
points against them) and the finale really didn’t have anything to do with it at
all.
The forest spirits seem to have been a major plot point, but
I couldn’t make heads or tails of their significance. An important character
development scene between them and Agito was incredibly rushed, and from then
on no real effort was given to explain them (a shortcoming that made the finale
all the more befuddling). I think the film wanted us to be rooting for them, though I have no idea why. Agito himself isn’t much of a character; we aren’t
given much from him other than his willingness to risk his life for a girl he’s
known for less than a week. Toola is the more interesting of the two, given
that it’s her motivation that drives the plot action in the first place. I had
high hopes for the villain, who shares similar origins to Toola, but by the
time the climax rolled around I had a hard time figuring out what his endgame
was in the first place. The story had become a slog, and I spent the last
thirty or so minutes of the film alternating between confused and bored.
Origins has some great environmental visuals, but the
character animation was strange and suffered at quite a few points. Most of the
designs were great—I particularly liked the Ragna and their steampunk-esque
spider tanks—and I’d say they were the film’s biggest selling point.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of much else to recommend in Origin. It wasn’t a
bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it left me feeling let down by
all the missed potential more than anything else.
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