City of Amnesia

Origin: Spirits of the Past is 95 minutes of eye-candy that will leave you wanting a real story. The writers seem to have been inspired by Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke and Laputa, with a nod to Future Boy Conan. While I admire their source material, I wish they would have given some thought to how a real society would act.

It's three hundred years since some cataclysm has split the moon and nearly depopulated the earth. Our teenaged protagonist, Agito, lives in a village at the top of a very tall structure (very tall -- we're talking a good hundred feet from the village down to the pool, from which the village draws all its water -- but I'll get to that later). He and his friend Cain decide to sneak down to the pool. Why? Teenage devilment, and the opportunity to steal a couple gallons of water, apparently. Things go wrong, and now the Forest is angry with the village (it seems so familiar...). It was not long after this that we found ourselves unable to watch any more.

It's very sad to watch. The backgrounds are good-looking, and the characters well drawn (although I was irked to see that the water guard, an important post, was the stock Comic Stupid Guard with Pot on Head), but the writers' idea of story seems to be random action scenes with a bit of comic leavening.

For example, at one point the boys are exploring inside a building. They are in harness, with a cable up to the top; fair enough. But if they are in safety harness, why should the winch at the top be set to freewheel, with nobody right there to stop it? (In fact, there should be at least three people up topside -- one on each winch, and a third to coordinate efforts.) When our hero dislodges a large piece of debris, he falls at the same speed it does.

For another, a society that has to fetch all its water by hand (at one point, a girl chirps "You can buy anything in the market for water!") will not have its crops growing far from water, and in exposed locations that get maximum evaporation. You guessed it -- they show a farmer working a field up at the top of the skyscraper cliff-dwelling, at least twenty feet above the outlet of the bucket chain that lifts water from the pool down below. Poignant image, stupid idea.

Well, you get the picture. Like Steamboy, this film has a lot of logical inconsistancies. Unlike Steamboy, it's not entertaining enough to allow you to go along with the flow. If I were you, I'd save my money for something else.

Was it a studio ghibli?

For some reason, Gonzo comes to mind... probably because Gonzo has been behind all manners of recent fiasco, like "Romeo x Juliet."

"Origin: Spirits of the Past" is a tremendously generic title. That's a red flag in my book.

I'm guessing that originality is going out of fashion...

1. dont copy howi meazaki
2. dont use THAT much eye-candy.
3. dont name your movie something so stupid.

1. Spell-check is your friend.

2. English 101 is your friend.

3. Webster's Dictionary is your friend.

Meet these friends, chill with them, learn from them.
War.

I'm taking it that you've seen this movie, shadow?

no but i've seen reviews. and a youtube video of this mixed with big o to utada hikaru's passion. not to my taste.

I know vegeta already chewed you up and spit you out, but allow my glove to wack your face just once, shadow, because absolutely no anime fan has a right to misspell Hayao Miyazaki.

I AM A VENGEFUL GOD AMONGST MEN.
War.

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