If you can get it running on your computer, I think you should give 1000xResist a chance; imo it's a very odd/compelling video game/ walking simulator/ piece of digital theater. I think you might love it, or you might hate it, but you'll definitely have *something* to say/ think about it.
Anyway, I finally watched this this past weekend, and while it's a fool's game to make sense of Bible Stuff In Japanese Media, I keep thinking back to the extended Noah's Arc recounting. Above all else, it weirdly reminds me of post-ascension Christianity; it's a Noah's Arc where the promised return never occurred, and so people just kept going, and then things Got Much Worse. It also reminds me of a lot of Hidetaka Miyazaki's games (and the timing lines up that he could have very much been influenced by them), which typically are designed to give the player the *sense* that they take place in a complex setting, but which only give *hints* as to that setting's actual backstory, leaving it as a puzzle for the audience. They also tend to be bleak, post-apocalyptic (or mid-apocalyptic) worlds, and also tend to end in a choice which, I think, is coloring my own perception of Angel's Egg itself. In Dark Souls et al, you tend to be presented with either A. allowing some monstrous world to continue cycling in torturous patterns, or B. annihilate that world, hoping that something else might someday take its place. When the egg is broken, here, it reads to me like Choice A. The ship that descended takes off in a way that suggests, to me, an endless cycle. If you hit play as soon as the movie ends, it feels like it could naturally follow from that ending.
If, instead, the egg had been allowed to hatch, we see the monstrous creature, the garuda it might have become, something which would have probably been a bad time for everybody left, but they were already having a bad time, and it might have been able to wipe everything away. Something slouches etc.
Probably though I'm just reading the cartoon too much through the lens of an unrelated video game developer.
I have had to temporarily ban myself from playing video games because I enter into a kind of fugue state… once I’m like at the halfway point in my manuscript I will look into this.
I like your analysis—I like what everybody had to say in the comments actually (I need to go through and reply). The reveal at the end is that they actually are on Noah’s Ark, and in fact if you kept walking you would eventually reach places that are not a landscape at all.… this feels related.
I wonder if anybody has a book on the Bible in Japanese pop culture.
If it helps for planning, the game takes about 12 hours total to complete. (and I forgot to say, it's a work of science fiction, and the gameplay consists of 1. walking around and talking to people in the society depicted, and 2. flashback scenes, where you can flip between days/ years of someone's memories).
And I very much want that book to exist; there must be at least a dissertation, somewhere
i have a deep love for this movie, and i do find it terribly moving. can’t really refute your argument against it, except to kind of lamely say the story isn’t anything, really, and i don’t think the symbols are a thing to work out. i haven’t worried about what it means, i guess. but i never miss it when it plays (legally or illegally) on a big screen. i like to sit quiet and take it in, and i’ve found the experience to be extraordinary
I don’t think I’m really arguing against the movie, just that I think the gender aspect of the way it uses its images is not good—like I think if you use a cliche or (more flatteringly) an archetype part of what you’re working with is what the image produces in others—for this reason I also think cliche can be a great artistic tool, especially in art that is very compressed like songs and poetry.
see, reading back over it, this comment seems insufficient. it’s not that i don’t worry about what it means, it’s more that the images/symbols don’t feel empty or shallow for me because they evoke a great depth of feeling in me when i watch the movie. and part of what i like is how slippery it is, how it doesn’t let itself be solved. that could mean that there’s nothing there, or it could mean that it is genuinely mysterious, that it points to a path without ever walking it exactly (that is, to give us a story). but see? i’m rambling, it doesn’t make much sense, and i guess my inability to articulate why this movie wrecks me so hard is why i keep coming back to it
This was very enjoyable to read and combined many of my favorite Notebook things, including discovering a deep cut shared interest (well, my only video game that matters / is any good is Final Fantasy IV, but close enough)
Not sure if I'll be watching Angel's Egg, though...
I was like "is Final Fantasy IV the one with the evil tree"… but I guess that's Final Fantasy V. I have played IV on an emulator I think though I can't remember if I played it to the end (I have never actually played FFVI to the end).
I had the urge to reply to this with the entire plot of FF4 and also notes about the way I would write a screenplay adaptation, so I had to put it away for a while until the madness passed. It is a blast though. Lots of really great little ideas plucked from fantastic anime, great music, big twists, crazy swings. It's able to suggest an extensive world history and tons of possible stories in it without ever bothering to explain anything. There's a little tiny bit of exposition at the beginning in a screen scroll, and then it's just doing the fantasy equivalent of getting on the highway and just going. 5 stars.
First of all I've gotta say: the scene in the enormous theater gave me the chills!!
I saw the whole thing in terms of the Noah's Ark story (but with a time-loop??). The setting is after The Flood -- here an unspecified apocalypse. Mankind (the ghostly fishermen) has been adrift on the water for ages and the dove they sent to find land (salvation) has yet to return. Because a capricious angel -- the little girl -- has waylaid the bird and imprisoned it in an egg which she jealously guards. Perhaps she's even ignorant of mankind's plight... as she endlessly fills vases of water. The Swordsman must trick or force the girl into relinquishing the egg, breaking the cycle and allowing mankind deliverance back to land.
I'm sure there are all kinds of holes in my theory and it definitely made more sense in my head immediately after watching Angel's Egg than it does now. But I remember being pleasantly surprised that it had more going for it than "just" the (incredible!) visuals. Amano!!!
It’s hard to conceive that this started as Lupin film, and the description of that film is so far from either Lupin or this film that I’m still puzzled.
I’m surprised to hear you “reject” the meaning of the symbols. It makes sense to reject what is false or shallow; it’s just not something I’ve seen much in criticism. It’s making me weigh the movie again…
since my current plan is to do Utena after this series I feel like a lot of Utena is about the rejection of symbolic and archetypal languages / meanings—first through trying to adopt them when they aren’t “for” you (“I’ll be a prince!”), then by stepping out of them altogether. so maybe a future theme.…
I do kind of mourn the “Lupin meets a cannibal angel” movie we could have had.
If you can get it running on your computer, I think you should give 1000xResist a chance; imo it's a very odd/compelling video game/ walking simulator/ piece of digital theater. I think you might love it, or you might hate it, but you'll definitely have *something* to say/ think about it.
Anyway, I finally watched this this past weekend, and while it's a fool's game to make sense of Bible Stuff In Japanese Media, I keep thinking back to the extended Noah's Arc recounting. Above all else, it weirdly reminds me of post-ascension Christianity; it's a Noah's Arc where the promised return never occurred, and so people just kept going, and then things Got Much Worse. It also reminds me of a lot of Hidetaka Miyazaki's games (and the timing lines up that he could have very much been influenced by them), which typically are designed to give the player the *sense* that they take place in a complex setting, but which only give *hints* as to that setting's actual backstory, leaving it as a puzzle for the audience. They also tend to be bleak, post-apocalyptic (or mid-apocalyptic) worlds, and also tend to end in a choice which, I think, is coloring my own perception of Angel's Egg itself. In Dark Souls et al, you tend to be presented with either A. allowing some monstrous world to continue cycling in torturous patterns, or B. annihilate that world, hoping that something else might someday take its place. When the egg is broken, here, it reads to me like Choice A. The ship that descended takes off in a way that suggests, to me, an endless cycle. If you hit play as soon as the movie ends, it feels like it could naturally follow from that ending.
If, instead, the egg had been allowed to hatch, we see the monstrous creature, the garuda it might have become, something which would have probably been a bad time for everybody left, but they were already having a bad time, and it might have been able to wipe everything away. Something slouches etc.
Probably though I'm just reading the cartoon too much through the lens of an unrelated video game developer.
I have had to temporarily ban myself from playing video games because I enter into a kind of fugue state… once I’m like at the halfway point in my manuscript I will look into this.
I like your analysis—I like what everybody had to say in the comments actually (I need to go through and reply). The reveal at the end is that they actually are on Noah’s Ark, and in fact if you kept walking you would eventually reach places that are not a landscape at all.… this feels related.
I wonder if anybody has a book on the Bible in Japanese pop culture.
If it helps for planning, the game takes about 12 hours total to complete. (and I forgot to say, it's a work of science fiction, and the gameplay consists of 1. walking around and talking to people in the society depicted, and 2. flashback scenes, where you can flip between days/ years of someone's memories).
And I very much want that book to exist; there must be at least a dissertation, somewhere
i have a deep love for this movie, and i do find it terribly moving. can’t really refute your argument against it, except to kind of lamely say the story isn’t anything, really, and i don’t think the symbols are a thing to work out. i haven’t worried about what it means, i guess. but i never miss it when it plays (legally or illegally) on a big screen. i like to sit quiet and take it in, and i’ve found the experience to be extraordinary
I don’t think I’m really arguing against the movie, just that I think the gender aspect of the way it uses its images is not good—like I think if you use a cliche or (more flatteringly) an archetype part of what you’re working with is what the image produces in others—for this reason I also think cliche can be a great artistic tool, especially in art that is very compressed like songs and poetry.
see, reading back over it, this comment seems insufficient. it’s not that i don’t worry about what it means, it’s more that the images/symbols don’t feel empty or shallow for me because they evoke a great depth of feeling in me when i watch the movie. and part of what i like is how slippery it is, how it doesn’t let itself be solved. that could mean that there’s nothing there, or it could mean that it is genuinely mysterious, that it points to a path without ever walking it exactly (that is, to give us a story). but see? i’m rambling, it doesn’t make much sense, and i guess my inability to articulate why this movie wrecks me so hard is why i keep coming back to it
This was very enjoyable to read and combined many of my favorite Notebook things, including discovering a deep cut shared interest (well, my only video game that matters / is any good is Final Fantasy IV, but close enough)
Not sure if I'll be watching Angel's Egg, though...
I was like "is Final Fantasy IV the one with the evil tree"… but I guess that's Final Fantasy V. I have played IV on an emulator I think though I can't remember if I played it to the end (I have never actually played FFVI to the end).
I had the urge to reply to this with the entire plot of FF4 and also notes about the way I would write a screenplay adaptation, so I had to put it away for a while until the madness passed. It is a blast though. Lots of really great little ideas plucked from fantastic anime, great music, big twists, crazy swings. It's able to suggest an extensive world history and tons of possible stories in it without ever bothering to explain anything. There's a little tiny bit of exposition at the beginning in a screen scroll, and then it's just doing the fantasy equivalent of getting on the highway and just going. 5 stars.
If it helps, the film is only a little over an hour long—certainly worth it!
First of all I've gotta say: the scene in the enormous theater gave me the chills!!
I saw the whole thing in terms of the Noah's Ark story (but with a time-loop??). The setting is after The Flood -- here an unspecified apocalypse. Mankind (the ghostly fishermen) has been adrift on the water for ages and the dove they sent to find land (salvation) has yet to return. Because a capricious angel -- the little girl -- has waylaid the bird and imprisoned it in an egg which she jealously guards. Perhaps she's even ignorant of mankind's plight... as she endlessly fills vases of water. The Swordsman must trick or force the girl into relinquishing the egg, breaking the cycle and allowing mankind deliverance back to land.
I'm sure there are all kinds of holes in my theory and it definitely made more sense in my head immediately after watching Angel's Egg than it does now. But I remember being pleasantly surprised that it had more going for it than "just" the (incredible!) visuals. Amano!!!
Haha I kind of love how you and Rob (below) both read it as a retelling of Noah's Ark but in very opposite directions.
It’s hard to conceive that this started as Lupin film, and the description of that film is so far from either Lupin or this film that I’m still puzzled.
I’m surprised to hear you “reject” the meaning of the symbols. It makes sense to reject what is false or shallow; it’s just not something I’ve seen much in criticism. It’s making me weigh the movie again…
since my current plan is to do Utena after this series I feel like a lot of Utena is about the rejection of symbolic and archetypal languages / meanings—first through trying to adopt them when they aren’t “for” you (“I’ll be a prince!”), then by stepping out of them altogether. so maybe a future theme.…
I do kind of mourn the “Lupin meets a cannibal angel” movie we could have had.
Can’t wait! Especially to hear your thoughts on the egg episode, one of my favorite anime episodes of all time 🥚