Seasoned fans know the curse: after years of witnessing great shows and films, you’re forever chasing the high of your very first mind-blowing anime. So, you can imagine my expectant excitement when a friend unearthed a Dragon Ball Z seasons 1-2 box set from one of those outdoor libraries, just so our newly converted anime friend could experience the series we grew up on and could recount it beat for beat the same way aunties in their Sunday best can summon the perfect Bible verse for any situation.
But when we slid the first disc into a VCR/DVD player we scavenged, the thing that floored me wasn’t the nostalgia of revisiting Akira Toriyama’s influence on all of pop culture as we know it. It was an accompanying preview for an early-aughts Funimation anime I’d never heard of that felt like a full-body high to watch.
After immediately tracking down the movie, I can say it’s… fine, in the same way a 7/10 JRPG is. But plenty of 7/10s can change someone’s life, and Origin: Spirits of the Past is an overlooked gem worth spotlighting on the off chance others can share in the unexpected dopamine rush it gave me.
Origin: Spirits of the Past, directed by Keiichi Sugiyama and animated by Gonzo, is a sci-fi anime film that, in a tight 90 minutes, feels like watching cutscenes from a retro RPG on YouTube in the best possible way. Vibes alone put it squarely in the Venn diagram median of Final Fantasy VII, Death Stranding, Xenoblade Chronicles, Horizon Forbidden West, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire for its ecological dystopian action, imaginative world-building, and rad character designs.
The movie opens in the most video-game fashion imaginable, with poetic, almost intangible narration about a seed awakening in the heart of a forest, a “forest-beast” falling from the moon, and man cowering in fear. Meanwhile, the film’s visuals are basically unloading the clip into your retinas with an overwhelming display of its entire artistic arsenal. Among the holy shit moments packed in its opening sequence are the moon splitting in half, a dragon-like plant creature emerging from the space wreckage, and meteors slamming into Earth in a cataclysmic boom. Then the movie cuts centuries ahead to a dystopian present, as if that opening sequence wasn’t the wildest way to jump-start a film.
Origin‘s story follows Agito, a boy living in a settlement literally called Neutral City. One side of the “subtlety is for cowards” city is a bridge leading to a forest ruled by killer sapient trees and druidic zealots; on the other, a militarized nation bristling with towering mechs called Ragna. Their fragile peace hinges on the reservoir beneath Neutral City. While spelunking an abandoned skyscraper in a buried metropolis, Agito discovers Toola, the lone survivor in a cryogenic pod from the old world. Toola’s awakening sparks a three-way conflict in which plant-powered humans and war machines clash to prevent and complete a prophecy that Toola will trigger another apocalypse.
Yes, all of the above encompass the most JRPG premises known to man. And honestly, a lot of Origin‘s perpetuation of well-trodden genre tropes is what cooled me on the hype that its trailer imbued in me. It’s got a cool armored lady who, disappointingly, doesn’t get to do much; a love triangle I couldn’t care less about; and megalomaniacal Sephiroth-and-Dr. Hojo-type villains with convoluted monologues to justify their vague sense of being and purpose. But what carried the entire film for me was how truly resplendent its visuals were and how hard its soundtrack bops made it a cinematic experience I don’t regret. I mean, look at its background art and tell me you don’t feel something indescribably captivating.
Aside from my lukewarm takeaway from Origin‘s story, its music—the thing that drew me to the dance—has wormed its way into my mind. Looking up its composer, basically, my old-school video gamey points of comparison and love of its soundtrack are a go figure, considering it was composed by renowned anime and video game composer Taku Iwasaki. Iwasaki is who anime and gaming fans have to thank for the score for Gachiakuta, Persona: Trinity Soul, Shin Kamen Rider, and so much more. But listening to the film’s haunting theme song, 調和 oto ～with reflection～, by Kokia—another low-key goated songstress in the anime/video game space—was a downright transcendent experience I’ll be chasing for a long time.
The song basically had me like old boy from Ratatouille, only instead of being transported back to the time when the food critic had his favorite childhood meal, I was whisked away to the time when I first heard Yuji Kajiura’s OST for Hack//Sign. If you know ball, you’d know that comparing any piece of music to that golden anime soundtrack is not something done in jest. But Origin more than earns its theme song by being hung in the rafters of anime’s most ravaging scores. It also certainly didn’t hurt that the little snail in my ear was having the sonic version of the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, listening to Origin‘s theme song while the wildest flourish of 2D and 3D CG animation had my pupils dilating in pure visual ecstasy. That’s about the best back-of-the-box quote I can offer for both newbie and seasoned anime fans to give Origin a watch and see for themselves.
Origin: Spirits of the Past is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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