Has anyone seen Gonzo's ORIGINE?

[Redcoffin]

Whilst browsing something completely different, I discovered a link to the French site of a June 2006 Studio Gonzo film called ORIGINE (http://www.origine-lefilm.com/). Looks nice. Produced by Sugiyama Keiichi with character designs by the incomparable Ogata Kouji. I never heard of it--never saw anything about it--can't find much info on it except gossip and press releases in French. Le Monde called it "une des bonnes decouvertes du dernier festival d'Annecy" but that's not helping me much.

A short writeup appears here (http://spuchi.wordpress.com/2006/06/18/origine-movie/) . Has any Gonzo whore in the room seen this film, and is it great or is it a turkey?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Origin: Spirits of the Past, aka Gin-iro no Kami no Agito.
Funimation already has the English site up if you look around a bit.

[Kellory]

Origin: Spirits of the Past, aka Gin-iro no Kami no Agito.
Funimation already has the English site up if you look around a bit.


There was also a trailer for it on the Moon Phase 3 disc as well.

Seems like your standard futuristic post apocalyptic save the world type show. Very much in the Mankind has destroyed the environment and now it is time to pay up and take responsibility. Think I'll pass unless there is a good sale or something. I've got a library full of similar stuff.

[Redcoffin]

Origin: Spirits of the Past, aka Gin-iro no Kami no Agito.
Funimation already has the English site up if you look around a bit.


There was also a trailer for it on the Moon Phase 3 disc as well.

Seems like your standard futuristic post apocalyptic save the world type show.[...] I've got a library full of similar stuff.


The story sort of looked like that--but it's a little unfair just to diss a film because the outline concept is familiar. It's what they do with it that matters. However, I do acknowledge that the "people messed up the earth" paradigm has a poor track record for quality anime. Maybe the women will be hot, which counts for something...

[Kellory]

The story sort of looked like that--but it's a little unfair just to diss a film because the outline concept is familiar. It's what they do with it that matters. However, I do acknowledge that the "people messed up the earth" paradigm has a poor track record for quality anime. Maybe the women will be hot, which counts for something...
I might agree with that if this were a 6 episode OVA or 13-26 episode TV series. But as a 90 minute movie cute girls are not going to be enough for me I think.

I'm a lot more forgiving on shows with length because they can afford to go slow. With only 90 minutes to play with, however, things need to be tight and things need to happen fast. Otherwise you just get bogged down. And I find it hard to believe that this show brings anything new.

Of course, I could be wrong. I've only seen the trailers after all. But it would take a real analysis of the show to convince me of that, and not just a fan gushing about the show.

[BluWacky]

A short writeup appears here (http://spuchi.wordpress.com/2006/06/18/origine-movie/) . Has any Gonzo whore in the room seen this film, and is it great or is it a turkey?

I'm no Gonzo whore, but I have seen Origin (the title has next to nothing to do with the film).

It's essentially what you'd expect from a Gonzo film - great animation, lots of CG, a decent plot that turns to goo after the first half of the film. It rips off Nausicaa something fierce (not a bad thing in itself but it's all a little too reminscent) and sacrifices narrative structure for cool battle sequences, and the scriptwriter appears to give up by the end as Agito (the lead character) turns into a mush-headed imbecile shouting "TOOLA!" over and over again, it's very Fushigi Yuugi.

The production values are faultless, in the film's defence - it truly is beautiful, in my opinion much more so than Brave Story (GONZO's other film last year), and the acting and particularly the scoring are great. It's just unfortunate that the film is essentially a rather poor animated Hollywood blockbuster.

I will actually still be buying the DVD simply because of the animation and music, but Origin is not really especially good by any stretch of the animation.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Don't forget the most awesomely retarded ultimate weapon ever.
I love that the animators' comprehension of geophysics doesn't progress beyond baking soda powered science fair projects.

[littleharlock]

Got to agree with BluWacky on Gin-iro no Kami no Agito. Having purchased (http://dragonautics.co.at/pub/media/300606_01.jpg) the jp DVD back when it came out last year I was anticipating to see this movie (which was somewhat fishy since I'm no big GONZO fan in general...but I blame it on the Ogata chara designs ^_~) yet I ended up disappointed by how it turned out.

Here's what I enjoyed about the movie:
- The animation. Actually I think that with Gin-iro no Kami no Agito, GONZO managed the best possible adaption of Kouji Ogata's (http://homepage.mac.com/ogata_kouji/.public/index.html) beautiful art. The animation is pretty fluid as to be expected from an anime with theatrical budget and I think the CG art used in the movie was pretty neat and once (for a change) GONZO almost managed to make the CG look fitting with the rest of the animation.
- The music. I'm no big fan of KOKIA but "Chouwa oto - with reflection" was a pretty neat way to get this movie started ("Ai no Melody" on the other hand...well nice ballad but IMO no *the* song by her to promote the movie with).
- The basic concept of the story. Okay the story of Gin-iro no Kami no Agito is *definitely* nothing too original. Heck here we have GONZO trying to mix some Mirai Shounen Conan, Laputa and other popular adventure anime movie story elements together and call it an original work but I really enjoyed the way it basically was done. Nothing original but still a nice take on it (if that makes any sense ^_^")

Now let's come to the flaws that Gin-iro no Kami no Agito has in my humble opinion:
- The lead characters. I didn't like Agito...I found his seiyuu's performance horrible througout the movie (heck when Agito is jumping around screaming for Toola would it have hurt Ryo Katsuji to show *a bit* of emotion?)
The same applies for Aoi Miyazaki's performance as Toola...which was horrible as well (a bit better than how Agito sounded througout the movie but that isn't hard to top).
The seiyuu of these two aside in general I got the impression that the movie would have been a *lot* better if the focus wouldn't be on those two characters througout the movie. Judging by the pilot version trailer (back when the project was still titled Spirits (IIRC the pilot trailer had it titled Spirits *need to check to be sure though*) originally it was planned that not only Agito gets to turn into "superpowered boy that can crush a tank with just one finger" but moreover the trailer showed the much more sympathic sidekicks of Agito to join him on the search for Toola with the same abilities. I think that the movie would have benfited if GONZO & Staff would have stick with the original concept for the story.
- The story. As said I enjoyed it partwise but overall througout the movie I thought to myself that with a more capable team invovled this could have become a way better movie. By the end you have so much recycled plot elements that it's hard not to think of other movies they got "inspired" from.

Overall I did enjoy Gin-iro no Kami no Agito and wouldn't say it was a bad purchase made...but it's yet another GONZO project that could have been pretty neat yet failed in the execution and personally made my interest in going to purchase/watch Brave Story vanish.

[Redcoffin]

Don't forget the most awesomely retarded ultimate weapon ever.
I love that the animators' comprehension of geophysics doesn't progress beyond baking soda powered science fair projects.

Maybe it was supposed to be "mythic" :P

Thanks for all the comments. Looks like I'll be filing it in the same category as "Spriggan."

[Shiroi Hane]

Looks like I'll be filing it in the same category as "Spriggan."
You mean "Buy it if Jonathan Clements does a commentary"? :p

[pianocello]

Don't forget the most awesomely retarded ultimate weapon ever.
I love that the animators' comprehension of geophysics doesn't progress beyond baking soda powered science fair projects.

Maybe it was supposed to be "mythic" :P

Thanks for all the comments. Looks like I'll be filing it in the same category as "Spriggan."

And probably "Steamboy" too.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Steamboy is completely awesome as long as you don't expect to see anything except awesome looking machines EXPLODING.
Both of Steamboy and Origin are better than Spriggan, since they put the most exciting parts at the end, instead of boring the crap out of us in mystic magic out of budget land.