Expelled from Paradise

Honestly it was great fun. The setup was good, the plot was clear and the three main characters were all very likable.

Plot: When a hacker called "Frontier Setter" hacks into an ideal virtual world where most of remaining humanity resides, the Officials of the system dispatch "Angela Balzac" to Earth where she'll not only have to cope with the harsh conditions of wasteland Earth but with her guide "Dingo" and her new body. The unlikely duo track down "Frontier Setter" and discovers a shocking truth that will lead to an unexpected battle against time.

Of course there's philosophical talk. "What makes a person... human? Can robot have consciousness of its own?" It's a familiar theme, almost a standard in big budget Japanese theatrical anime. But it wasn't over-done and the message was straight-forward. Of course the female lead is impossibly hot (even in her "under-developed" "16 year old" body). It's textbook stuff, mate. There will be flashes of her naked body. She will wear clothes that show off her amazing physique and nobody in the film will bat an eye. And of course there will be big showdown involving missiles, lasers, machine-guns, robots, booby-traps, sniper rifles and giant swords.

It is also predictably amazing in its visual aesthetics. Every frame is filled with detail and the sheer clarity of it all makes current CGI animation doodles on photo-shop. Lively camera work also adds to the action taking place while never losing focus on its characters. But you know all of this when you're even searching on IMDb for this film.

This is not a game changer for mainstream anime. Nor is it a must-watch for newbies to get a taste of what an anime genre can offer. What it is that it's a pure entertainment that combines what's best in the industry and jam-packed into 100 minutes of rollicking ride. Your eyes shall water, your mind shall think and it will leave you satisfied. Nothing more, nothing less.

My only wish for improvement is with plot in DEVA. It's a fantastic premise (although yes, it does sound like Matrix) and well deserves its own action sequence within. The possibility of it is endless and yet we are only given teases of it. However it's just a thought that comes way later after losing yourself in the film's world and its attractive characters. Oh and stay in for the credits. You'd be missing out otherwise.

It was pretty good. The animation is spectacular, almost too spectacular. There were times I thought I might have a seizure, but it was still dazzling. The first part of the story is fairly conventional: sharp, focused woman is paired with lazy, uncommitted slacker. (Think "True Grit" or "A Few Good Men" or "The Princess and the Frog" or "Trading Places" or "Flushed Away" or "Zootopia".) Essentially, she leaves The Matrix in order to combat a threat in the real world. The mystery part of the movie wasn't terribly interesting, but it got better when the two main characters stop racing around long enough to discuss their different worlds. The film concludes with a huge, action sequence, but there isn't much tension since there is no element of "How are they going to pull this off?" They're going to pull it off by having tons more firepower. It was an entertaining film, but not terribly original.

This is really the first "10" I've given anything, moreover, its' the first anime I've seen, out of many, that deserves it. This feature is simply beautifully animated and produced. The two main characters, Angela and Dingo, are attractive and engaging, having personalities that have been carefully crafted to be quintessentially human. The fact that Angela is as beautiful and sexy as she is, with an astonishingly provocative body, is almost out of place here, since it is the only truly erotic thing that there is in the movie; but the way the creators handle that is just to leave her be, this evocative beauty working her way through an otherwise barren and post-apocalyptic world. I suppose they did that to keep reminding us of the "perfect" world she comes from, and that she is truly out of place here in the far more sublime and tawdry Earth environment. The "real world" and its current state is the reason that whoever created Deva, a digitized, computerized virtual reality in which 98 % of the world population now "lives" - or whatever verb you wish to use to characterize that existence.

There is a real story here, with some philosophical inputs as to what it means to be human. It seems that the Deva people believe a world without any hardship or struggle, and where you can have almost anything you want - providing you have earned enough memory - is the ultimate lifestyle. Dingo, of course, Angela's Earthbound guide, has different ideas about what it means to be free and human, which provides some thought-provoking interest. We are reminded by this comely, savvy Earth man that such ancient types as Hitler, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Attila the Hun were people who had similar motives to the administrators of Deva!

The story moves along quite briskly, with some satisfying action here and there, but mainly it is a contrast in the two lifestyles, the computerized one Angela comes from, and Dingo's Earth reality. The two of them eventually come up against Deva's totalitarian rules for existence, and Angela comes to wonder whether her Deva reality is the ideal existence she believed; ultimately the two of them have to battle Deva's forces to maintain any life at all, while the Deva big-shots would be happiest if the two Earthbound people, and every free-thinking person like them, were eliminated altogether to protect their "utopia."

Overall, this is a satisfying epic, with decent story, superb animation, which includes simply beautiful backgrounds and characters, and a mindful nod as to what the true value of being a human actually is. It is entertaining and satisfying to watch over and over again.

Good watch, will likely watch again, and can recommend for anime fans that don't mind some fan service.

This is a great, Matrix like premise for a story, but let's the get the obvious stuff out of the way: yes, her outfit is ridiculous, and while the idea that they can grow clones and harvest them prematurely, it was a very unnecessary that her body be the equivalent of 16 years of age, I'd even go as far as to argue that it would be detrimental if all the hormones and everything are balanced naturally.

THAT aside, I love the concepts that are used in this: the technological aspects of digitizing humans, having A.I.: the moral philosophical quandries it presents about freedom, society, and fixed resources.

The biggest problem is part of the premise, the entire time the characters are floundering for position in this discussion of dealing with each others' cultures so you never really feel like you're completely on anyone's side. That shifts a little in the 3rd act, but no by much.

But if you like action: robots, gunfire, explosions, and / or cool sci-fi stuff, this anime has it.

Nice anime. Not that it shines with art, music or a twisted plot. All these are of high quality, but not at all at an outstanding level. What makes "Rakuen Tsuihou" special is the presence of common sense in both the characters' behavior and the development of the plot. It may not be possible to agree with all the ideas, but intellectually, this anime will not keep you gritting your teeth waiting for the end of the story. What also pleases are adequate, adult heroes who have reasonable motivations and behavior appropriate to situations. The "incarnated" heroine experiences all the unexpected effects of having a body, including fatigue, illness, and the inability to cope with the three goons in the real world. Of course, it was not without exaggeration of her naivety, honesty, kawaii and the abuse of curvy forms with oppai swaying, but these exaggerations, perhaps, were designed to compensate for her negative features, outweighing them and arousing sympathy for the heroine, because otherwise she a self-centered careerist with views that would flinch even National Socialists. The hero, on the other hand, is quite a mature, calm and perceptive man, not a hysterical teenager. In general, the characters are quite sympathetic and cause empathy, the intimate narrative focuses on the development of their relationships and meaningful, not at all stupid dialogues. In terms of the plot, there are a couple of unexpected turns and an intrigue that does not disappear almost until the very end - what will the main heroine choose?

As for the moral message of the anime, the raised issues, perhaps the problems of "humanization" and "dehumanization" are considered superficially in the Rakuen Tsuihou, but clearly deeper and more insightful than in other works with a similar theme. Even in a seemingly "ideal world" where there can be no problems with food, housing, money and other material goods, people still found something to envy and on that basis to destroy other people ("archive" them). It shows a great deal of a fundamental, incorrigible flaw in human nature ("original sin", as Christianity calls it) - no matter how ideal society you build, how you'd avoid competition for resources, there will always be such a resource (anything - strength, power, money, popularity, health, beauty, intelligence, space, skin color, tall height, short, big breasts, small, long legs, short, virtual avatar, or allocated memory), which will cause envy, competition, conflicts and, ultimately, poverty (in relation to this resource), oppression and deprivation of life of the "unworthy". Neither world peace, nor communism, nor capitalism, nor "virtual heaven" will help - by virtue of human nature, all the same problems will flourish, and most likely, they will multiply the more the more they are denied...

Although this is not emphasized in the rather light narrative of the anime, "Rakuen Tsuihou" is a dystopia, where the "virtual heaven" became a hell ruled by self-proclaimed "gods" (in the form of which the elite of the pseudo-heaven is depicted) who established totalitarian control over the population of their world and turned it into slaves obsessed with competition for the resource of computing power. Correctly noticing the fatal flaw of humanity (original sin), the ineradicable incompleteness of human existence, the screenwriter, unfortunately, draws false conclusions from this, placing his hopes on artificial intelligence as a kind of perfect "child of humanity". However, for a non-Christian, the screenwriter is already perspicacious enough and unable to go further, except for creating an idol, but no longer from a man, but from an "intelligent" machine. To a Christian it should be clear that the only solution to the problem of mimetic desire, to use the terminology of Rene Girard, or original sin, is to look not to another person or object (idols), but to the one whose resources are not limited, like Him himself, to the one who possesses the fullness of being - to God. But, again, one cannot demand such philosophical and theological depth from Japanese anime. What is already depicted does not cause intellectual rejection and does not sin against common sense (except for the idealization of AI, of course).

There are a couple of plot flaws, such as why it was necessary to go to battle, if it was possible to simply hack and turn off the enemy's machines (here logic suffers for the sake of entertainment), or what feelings digitized "people" may have if organs of these senses (not gauges of abstract units) are missing? I'm not even talking about ignoring the problem of copying (not sending "consciousness" - but in this case all "humanization" of digitized "people" and empathy for the heroine would have disappear because of her countless copies) and interference in the "consciousness" of virtual "people". Ultimately, I believe, all "consciousnesses" would be "hacked" and "dehumanized" by the ruling elite to the level of machines, obedient performers - for the sake of the "common good", of course, the eradication of deviations and so on, but in fact - because it would be easier to rule and there would be no obstacles to this, like physical bodies. Or most likely the elite would begin to self-copy uncontrollably, gathering all the computing power for their copies and cutting out the rest of the "programs" so that they would not take up space until "there will be only one left" with an army of controlled copies. But in that case, there would be no one to make this anime about, which, for its atypical for Japanese thinking, pleasant, adequate characters and rationality.