Angel's Egg (天使のたまご Tenshi no Tamago?) is a Japanese anime feature film produced by Tokuma Shoten in 1985. A collaboration between popular artist Yoshitaka Amano and director Mamoru Oshii, it incorporates surrealistic and existentialist qualities. It uses almost no dialogue, making it a commonly cited example of progressive anime.[1]
Parts of the film were used in the 1988 Australian sci-fi movie, "In the Aftermath".[2]
Plot[]
Angel's Egg follows the daily life of a young girl in a surreal world of darkness and shadows.
The film opens with a checkerboard beach, where a lone observer watches a mechanical sun - covered in statues of praying figures - sinks into the sea, blowing thousands of whistles all the while. From the distance, the girl hears the whistles and wakes up.
The girl, whose name is not mentioned, is the keeper of a mysterious egg. She spends her time collecting bottles and artifacts in a gothic, dead city. A young man, whose name also remains a mystery, arrives in the dark town one day riding a biomachine and wearing a cross-like weapon on his back. The two meet and talk, though their dialogue consists mostly of the single, repeated question "Who are you?"
The girl tells the man to stop following her, but he persists, and she ultimately doesn't seem to mind. Meanwhile, the shadows of giant coelacanths appear within the town. Many humans, who sit or stand motionless in the city all day, holding fishing rods and harpoons, suddenly come alive and begin hunting the fish.
Inside the girl's vast cavernous "refuge", which contains many strange fossils and her water jar collection, the man tells the girl a tale similar to Noah's Ark, in which the waters never subsided and the bird never returned. He states that it was so long ago, all the animals have turned to stone. He also describes a massive bird that he saw once - he can't remember where, or if it was even real - sleeping in a great, life-sucking tree. The girl assures him that the bird did exist, and leads him to a massive fossil of an angel. She claims that her egg has the bird inside, and that she wants to hatch it and return it to its place. The man waits for the girl to fall asleep and breaks the egg.
Upon finding her egg broken and empty, the girl reacts in anguish and follows the departing man, only to fall into a ravine of water and drown. Her dying exhalation under the water blossoms into bubbles of "eggs" on the surface. Alone on the seashore, the man watches the mechanical sun rise, this time with a statue of the girl and her egg on the center. The camera pans out to reveal that the island resembles the overturned hull of a boat.
A symbolic ending of apocalypse and rebirth is mixed with a gradual revelation of the story's world, which is highly abstract and ambiguous.
Cast & Characters[]
Girl
The young girl portrays innocence in a world of darkness. She lives in an abandoned planetarium and guards the mysterious egg, a focal point of the movie. The girl, who lives alone, collects water in bottles, watching it as bubbles rise to the top. Voiced by: Mako Hyōdō
Man
The man is portrayed as a Christ-like (or even Antichrist-like) figure, carrying a cross on his back and wearing bandages on his hands. He tries to protect the young girl once he meets her, but ultimately steals the egg that she keeps. Voiced by: Jinpachi Nezu
Narrator
Voiced by: Keiichi Noda
Music[]
The music in Angel's Egg was composed by Yoshihiro Kanno who seldom composed film scores.
References[]
- ↑ Angel's Egg (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2006-07-09.
- ↑ IMDb.com: In the Aftermath (1988) - Movie connections
Further reading[]
- Ruh, Brian. 2004. Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6334-5
External links[]
- Angel's Egg at the Internet Movie Database
- Mamoru Oshii's Angel's Egg
- Yoshitaka Amano's Artwork for Angel's Egg
- Unofficial interpretation regarding film's symbolism
- Positive Review
- Negative Review (Archived 2009-10-25)
- J-pop.com review
Template:Feature Films Directed By Mamoru Oshii it:Tenshi no tamago ru:Angel’s Egg tl:Angel's Egg zh:天使之卵 (動畫)