Angel’s Egg Review – Mamoru Oshii’s brilliant 1985 film is a terrifying philosophical adventure | Video

This 1985 anime is a real sensation: a strange, vivid odyssey in the empty space told mostly in symbolic images. Millions away from director Mamoru Oshii’s often voice-over films (such as his acclaimed work, Spirit in a Shell since 1995), it still varies a lot of intellectual opinions related to its interest in Christian theology. But like the egg being shaken by the protagonist of the film, or the shadows of the big fish swimming in the corners of the town, this is Christian theology like a thousand years in the future, or after a bad dream.

The Waif (voiced by Mako Hyōdō) carries this egg under her pockets, like a pre-term pregnancy, while she destroys a dark, middle-class European city to find water bottles. One day, he is surprised to see a skinny princess (Jinpachi Nezu) coming out of the main road. He shoots, but then runs into him with his stun gun on a cross while sitting on the steps. Showing him an egg, he accepts him, for a while, as a protector in the shadow of the burgh, where groups of fishermen chase fish for silhouettes. But it is not clear if he is kind. He said: “If the egg is not opened, there is no way to know what is inside it.”

Oshii cracks a few theory eggs and gives them a good whisking here. The boy tells the story of Noah’s ark – but one in which the doves, and hope, did not return. The long silence and loaded questions suggest that this may be what they are looking for within the girl’s reward. Perhaps their meeting takes place after the rainy season, which would explain the presence of water everywhere: its dance, water drops and circles are lovingly described in many fascinating sequences.

Overseen by artist Yoshitaka Amano, Angel’s Egg’s artwork is in full swing. Exposed to the point of leaning close to monochrome and using fewer frames than anime, it creates a sense of depth and stillness. The girl, with her flowing locks, is like something out of an Aubrey Beardsley fantasy. He meets some near-saintly revelations at the end of the film – but you’d have to be a mature catechist, perhaps well-versed in Japanese culture, to tell what that means. Even so, this disturbing metaphor has a literary and mystical nature.