Origine

It begin nice and interesting about ecological problems and apolacypt future of Earth... but then it get really bad and nonsense: a bad guy, an army, the florest alive, a girl from past with a device to change everything or destroy all.

When you see the mountain volcano computer super machine you think "I could be doing something better, maybe just sleeping or washing crockery".

It's not uncommon to see Japanese animation try to remind its target audience about environmental messages given the fast pace at which the country is growing with city life and machinery. While Origin: Spirits of the Past was rich with potential, it ultimately falls apart after the first act.

The film takes place in a post apocalyptic world where trees and nature itself has gained intelligent consciences and humanity feels threatened by it. Agito is a boy who lives in a shanty town and ends up discovering a girl named Toola who was frozen in time. I found that there was much to like about the first act of the film due to its delicate pacing and set up for what could have been a plot line just as rich as its visually pleasing colour pallets. Unfortunately, what follows after the halfway mark is a series of high concept ideas derived from several different sources and ultimately a lackluster and unsatisfying hodge podge of clichés.

There were several scenes later in the film where exposition feels very rushed and driven by contrivances. A lot of the information you'd expect can very easily fly over your head unless you can keep up with the jarring pacing of the later acts of the film. The story just seems to throw a ton at the audience without letting any of it actually sink in, and this was especially surprising given how the first act took it's time with introducing characters with a 'this is how long it takes to cook dinner' approach.

A lot of the ideas seem to be derived from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Final Fantasy and several other sources which left me with the impression that the creators were barely trying. This especially shows in the man vs nature environmental message that has been presented numerous times in the past. The problem is that this film offers nothing new. It's all so stale and so predictable that it's very difficult to care for anything that's going on, especially with the characterization which feels very two dimensional in their emotional arcs.

Sadly, Origin: Spirits of the Past is all smoke but no fire.

If Origin: Spirits of the past seems familiar to you then you are not alone. Even the most indiscriminate anime fan can tell that this is basically a watered-down copy of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. There are so many similarities that I'm surprised no lawsuits were involved.

Set in a future where plant life has taken control of a desecrated world the survivors try to live a delicate existence between the powerful forest and the fascist military until one day a mysterious girl arrives out of the past with lots of questions and long, drawn-out answers. Meh, it's all just so generic and dull full of all the usual anime nonsense. I never really understood why the hero, Agito, falls in love with her so easily. There's not much going on between them. And who was that calling her on that weird phone thingy near the start? It's never explained.

This story has been done bigger and better 25 years ago and there's not any particular reason why anyone should rush out and see Origin. Sorry.

In short, this film was an overall disappointment in many levels. The story contained some very interesting ideas, but they were delivered in a blunt and mediocre fashion. Some of these concepts are clumsily mentioned and ignored for the rest of the film.

At times I got the feeling that this film tries to force its message on me. There were way too many clichéd and predictable moments to make things worse.

The main characters were annoying and shallow. The film doesn't give enough focus to any of the characters but continuously shuffles from one to the other in a disjointed fashion.

The visuals were impressive but that's something very common among many anime films. At times it felt as if some scenes were artificially added for visual value.

Gin-iro no kami no Agito, feels pretty much like an incomplete story board strung together hastily. If you are a fan of this genre, I recommend that you are better off with titles as 'Princess Mononoke', 'Grave of the Fireflies' or 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'.

The film had an intriguing idea and story-line. But unfortunately they have produced a lack luster effort. With a quite unfocused story and slowly paced.

The story is set 300 years in the future, in a i would say post - apocalyptic landscape. A young boy/man Agito comes upon a girl frozen in time Tula wakes her up, which could tip the balance in an ongoing war between two factions. One whom wants to live peacefully with the forest and one that wants to bring the earth back, to the way it was. just by typing up the synopsis here, again gives me the feeling of a good idea gone to waist. One of the main things that bothered me were the way the two factions were put across, as the people who want to destroy the forest are obviously the bad guys, which is the obvious environmental message the film wants to put across and showed no subtlety while it slapped you across the face with this message, but the forest which has some mythical druids protecting it, come across to me as quite like a dictatorship holding the power over human kind. The pacing of the film was very slow with some action scenes you would hope lift the momentum for the picture which actually turned out quite bland and predictable.

The film is beautifully drawn with the huge landscapes being absolutely stunning and competing with Studio Ghibli on that front. The dubbing was pretty good and the musical score was not disappointing.

Overall an OK film, with decent elements, and an idea there that could work very well but not quite on this movie.