released 01 sep 08 / last mod 01 sep 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of the anime movie ORIGIN: SPIRITS OF THE PAST, we see the Earth undergoing a sort of "botanical apocalypse", in which civilization is shattered by a biological experiment gone wrong, leaving the survivors in an uncomfortable balance with a sentient and occasionally hostile forest.
Cut to several centuries in the future. Two societies are struggling to survive in the new ecological order, one that works to coexist with the forest and one that plans to destroy it. A lad named Agito, brought up to cooperate with the forest, inadvertently resuscitates a girl named Toola, who was put in suspended animation after the fall of civilization. Toola holds the key to the conquest of the forest, and she becomes the target of rival factions, while Agito comes to her aid.
The first thing that can be said about ORIGIN is that it is nicely produced, downright striking and visually memorable in places. The second thing that can be said about it is that it does not so much have a story of its own as it simply strings together bits and pieces of stories by other anime directors, particularly Hayao Miyazaki. It is almost amusing to follow through the movie and pick out which elements were lifted where.
That might have been tolerable had the scriptwriters been able to put together a halfway interesting story, but the plot never really carries any weight and does not tolerate the least skeptical consideration -- and its pretentious environmental "message" only manages to bog the narrative down further. What is particularly obnoxious about ORIGIN is that it throws out torrents of interesting visual details and almost obstinately refuses to bother to explain them, when they might have provided an intriguing basis for a much better story than this movie delivers.
ORIGIN does make for pretty eye candy, though even at that level it leaves something to be desired, since the clear effort that was put into the production is marred by a certain hamfistedness, particularly in the annoying soundtrack work. There's something exasperating with people proving they have the technical capability to do good work, but only can come up with forgettable mumbo-jumbo.
