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| FANTASIA |
Angel’s Egg unfolds like a forgotten myth—half-remembered, half-invented, and entirely sacred.
Can you write about a film that defies language, that slips through the cracks of narrative like water seeping into ancient stone? Angel’s Egg, Mamoru Oshii’s cryptic 1985 masterpiece, is less a movie than a whispered dream—one so fragile and deliberate that to speak of it feels like risking its collapse. And yet, talk about it we must, because Angel’s Egg is an experience that demands introspection, invites discomfort, and rewards patience with a kind of revelation that doesn’t explain, but lingers.
At a spare seventy-one minutes, Angel’s Egg stretches time like a psalm spoken underwater. It is unyielding in its refusal to clarify itself. For twenty minutes, silence dominates. There are two characters—a young girl with the hair of an old soul, who guards a large white egg like it contains the last spark of hope in a godless world, and a nameless boy bearing a cross-shaped weapon who may be savior, sinner, or both. Their exchanges are minimal, abstract—almost biblical. They move through a world where Gothic cathedrals collapse into each other and fossilized giants rot beneath the earth, a place where fish shadows swim across walls but the sea is gone. It's a place forsaken by both man and God.
Visually, Angel’s Egg is an abyssal marvel. Yoshitaka Amano’s art direction turns every frame into a cryptic fresco: vast, darkened ruins stretch beyond comprehension, mechanical suns groan in the sky, and time itself seems to be decaying. The imagery evokes Bosch, Giger, and Gothic horror, yet is filtered through a uniquely Japanese sensibility. The animation is slow, reverent—obsessively so—and it dares you to wait, to stare, to meditate.
Is there a plot? Perhaps. A parable is told midway through—about Noah, about a dove that never returns—and it becomes the film’s quiet thesis. Faith in the absence of proof. Hope without reward. Belief in a dying world. The egg becomes both symbol and cipher—childlike faith cradled in trembling hands, something tender and unknowable. Is it worth protecting? Is it even real? Oshii, who began this project in the wake of a personal loss of religious faith, offers no answer.
The final image of Angel’s Egg—its elusive punchline—is a haunting punctuation mark that casts retroactive meaning over all that preceded it. But whether that meaning is despair or transcendence depends entirely on the viewer. Oshii does not comfort. He confronts.
And yet for all its cerebral weight, Angel’s Egg is most powerful as a mood. Its soundscape—minimal, eerie, funereal—melds with the visuals to create an atmosphere that feels thick enough to drown in. It’s less about understanding than surrender. You don’t watch Angel’s Egg; you absorb it. Or perhaps it absorbs you.
It is, undeniably, pretentious. It is also breathtaking.
For fans of games like Bloodborne, which share its obsession with decay, mystery, and the sacred unknowable, Angel’s Egg will feel like a spiritual predecessor. For others, it will be alienating, even infuriating.
But for the right viewer—the willing one—Angel’s Egg is nothing short of a dark prayer carved in celluloid. Whether or not you believe in what it’s praying to, it’s impossible to look away. I belong to this last group.
ありがとう。またすぐに会いましょう
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