{"id":639597,"date":"2026-06-15T09:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/639597\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T09:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:34:09","slug":"angels-egg-review-mamoru-oshiis-dazzling-1985-anime-is-an-eerie-philosophical-adventure-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/639597\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel\u2019s Egg review \u2013 Mamoru Oshii\u2019s dazzling 1985 anime is an eerie philosophical adventure | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This 1985 anime is a true curio: a furtive, portentous odyssey into a hollowed-out landscape told largely in symbolist images. A million miles away from director Mamoru Oshii\u2019s often-logorrheic films (such as his best-known work, Ghost in the Shell<\/a> from 1995), it still swills around plenty of philosophical concepts linked to his fascination with Christian theology. But like the egg being lugged around by the film\u2019s nameless female protagonist, or the giant fish shadows swimming across the town facades, this is Christian theology as if half-remembered millennia later, or in the aftermath of a bad dream.<\/p>\n

The waif (voiced by Mako Hy\u014dd\u014d) carries this ovum under her petticoats, like some pre-pubescent immaculate conception, while scavenging a dark, mittel-European-style city for flasks of water. One day, she\u2019s startled to see a skinny princeling (Jinpachi Nezu) step out from a giant mechanised war machine trundling down the street. She scarpers, but later runs into him and his weird cruciform gun sitting on a set of steps. Showing him the egg, she accepts him, at least temporarily, as a protector in this shadowy burgh, where bands of fishers run after fish silhouettes. But it\u2019s far from clear if he\u2019s benevolent. \u201cIf an egg is not cracked open, there is no way of telling what it contains,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Oshii certainly breaks a few doctrinal eggs and gives them a good whisking here. The boy recounts a version of the Noah\u2019s ark story \u2013 but one in which the dove, and hope, never returned. Long silences and loaded questions suggest this might be what\u2019s he\u2019s looking for inside the girl\u2019s prize. Maybe their encounter is taking place in a post-diluvian period, which would explain the presence of water everywhere: its dancing reflections, drips and concentric circles are lovingly detailed in an array of dazzling effects.<\/p>\n

Overseen by conceptual artist Yoshitaka Amano, Angel\u2019s Egg\u2019s artwork is ravishing throughout. Stripped down to a pallid near-monochrome and using far fewer frames than the anime norm, it musters hypnotic eeriness and poise. The girl, with her cascade of tendrilled locks, is like something out of an Aubrey Beardsley fantasia. She undergoes something close to a saintly canonisation in the film\u2019s final stages \u2013 but you\u2019d have to be a radical catechist, probably one fluent in Japanese culture, too, to say what it all means. Regardless, this unsettling parable has a scriptural concision and mystery.<\/p>\n

Angel\u2019s Egg is in UK cinemas from 17 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This 1985 anime is a true curio: a furtive, portentous odyssey into a hollowed-out landscape told largely in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-639597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}