Plants are dragons and the past is the future in Keiichi Sugiyama’s equal parts bonkers and boring animated sci-fi.
“The mountain is heading towards Neutral city!”
I really don’t know what to make of this film, honestly. Gnozo’s strange movie about a world plagued by a magical forest, able to give certain people superpowers, and the humans who struggle to live alongside it. It was both trying to say a lot, while also saying and doing very little in the process. Let’s get into this a bit deeper.
At some point in the 21st Century (henceforth referred to as the Past), magical plants grown on the moon decide to land on Earth, in the form of a dragon that cries green and completely take over the planet. Hundreds of years later, humanity is barely getting by, living in the wreckage of civilisation and only allowed a bit of water thanks to the magical Forest and the weirdo Druids who run the place. Agito and his friend Cain are mischievous kids who try to get more water, and when they are rumbled, Agito flees and ends up at a mysterious laboratory where he discovers a girl in cryosleep.
Once the girl, known as Toola, wakes up Agito begins to learn more about the events that caused moon plants to take over the planet, how Toola is integral in this, and how the mysterious Shunack from the evil nation of Ragna (you can tell because their buildings all belch out black smoke) play into it.
Origin: Spirit of the Past is the sort of movie, in the vein of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Bubble that wants to capture the spirit of early Ghibli films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. However, it lacks finesse in storytelling, and more often than not feels overstuffed with exposition, oddly void of actual meat and filled with some great set pieces that serve little purpose. It’s the sort of movie that expects you learn a lot of terminology and mythology very quickly, and if you’re not on board then nothing that happens in the movie is going to matter to you.
As a story, it’s pretty straightforward and unlike other films I’ve seen that have been complete messes from beginning to end, Origin is actually quite simple. It’s just that none of it is particularly fresh, or that interesting – with the exception of its main villain. Shunack, a man described as “possessed by the power of the past”, wants to destroy the Forest, for obvious reasons which I would argue makes him a pretty sympathetic character. The complexity of the villain does undercut the environmentalist message the movie wants to have. Then again, it’s hard to want to save the planet when all the plants dictate how much water you get to have on any particular day.
At least it looks pretty good, with an artistic direction that does a lot of worldbuilding off the back of a pretty shoddy story. The background art is really nice, and while some of the CGI art is a bit shocking, it’s never offensively bad. It’s the sort of film where I’d like to have the backgrounds as desktop wallpapers, provided none of the actual characters are featured. Because they feature some of the most boring designs I’ve seen in a sci-fi anime in years. The characters all look they came right out of that How to Draw Manga book your aunt gave you ten years ago.
It’s a weird little film, but one I’m not mad I saw. It’s just oddly paced, with exposition filling a massive chunk of the runtime, and the film itself not having a second act to speak of. It just jumps from discovering Toola, to her immediately joining the other side, and Agito going to rescue her. As far as I can tell, the film’s entire second act consists of a scene of Agito talking to his father, who has become a tree.
At the end of the day, Origin: Spirit of the Past is as forgettable as Nausicaä is memorable. Stuff happened, and if I hadn’t been writing notes throughout I wouldn’t have been able to say anything about the film. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I also feel like I could have napped and not missed too much. It’s just odd, and not in that fun way. At one point, Toola’s tears are enough to get past a biometric lock. Honestly, I’m still stuck on how quickly those plants travelled to get here from the actual moon.
Verdict: A mess of grey hairs, volcano tanks and choke-collar cellphones, Origin: Spirits of the Past is … certainly something.
Overall entertainment: 5.5/10
Violence: Barely animated/10
Sex: Agito knew what he was doing asking Toola to climb first.
Expressive faces: They don’t call it Neutral City for nothing.
Druids: What even are they?
Enhancements: What even is that?
OST: Yeah OK that was pretty cool.
Origin: Spirit of the Past (2006)
Also known as: 銀色の髪のアギト, (Silver haired Agito)
Japanese
Driector: Keiichi Sugiyama
Writers: Nana Shiina, Naoko Kakimoto
CAST
Ryo Katsuji – Agito
Aoi Miyazaki – Toola
Yuko Kotegawa – Yolda
Masaru Hamaguchi – Cain
Toshikazu Fukawa – Hajan
Kenichi Endo – Shunack
Ren Osugi – Agashi
Omi Minami – Minka
Atsuko Yuya – Jessica
The Asian Cinema Critic 