Origin: Spirits of the Past

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.