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REVIEW: Angel's Egg




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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1471
PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 12:15 pm Reply with quote
I'm not sure I'd hang the anchor of Belladonna of sadness around this film's neck, but agree on Fantastic Planet.

There's a lot of Cold War-era Eastern European animation to compare Angel's Egg to --- look at stuff by Yuri Norstein (e.g., "The Overcoat"), Alexander Alexeieff ("The Nose"), maybe the stop-motion works of Jan Svankmajer, and I think you'll see connections to Angel's Egg (when I saw the skeletal fish in the sky above a European-like urban twilight in Angel's Egg I was positive I'd seen something like it before at a film venue that closed before Angel's Egg was made, but I've never been able to track it down).
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Romuska
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Joined: 02 Mar 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 2:45 pm Reply with quote
The fact that this movie still isn't available out here should be a federal crime! I really hope Discotek or GKids obtain the rights one day.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2681
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 2:50 pm Reply with quote
Romuska wrote:
The fact that this movie still isn't available out here should be a federal crime! I really hope Discotek or GKids obtain the rights one day.


Unfortunately, Angel's Egg is something that's essentially been in licensing limbo ever since the 80s, and no one's 100% sure why. Justin Sevakis thinks that maybe Roger Corman was given more control over the license than the Japanese companies intended back in the 80s for Into the Aftermath (which was a common thing, back in the day), while there's even a rumor that the paperwork regarding the licensing rights for home video outside of Japan may have been accidentally destroyed at one point, so no one's fully sure who's in charge of that over in Japan.

Many have apparently tried to license Angel's Egg over the decades, but the closest we've gotten is Arrow Video's BD for Into the Aftermath back in 2019, and even that release didn't (or maybe even couldn't) include Angel's Egg, even as a bonus.
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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 3:16 pm Reply with quote
Well, there's so little dialogue that, for North Americans, ordering the blu-ray from Japan (same region code as NA) is a reasonable alternative. It's not even all that expensive (by Japan blu-ray standards, anyway).
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mdo7



Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 6406
Location: Katy, Texas, USA
PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 6:28 pm Reply with quote
Romuska wrote:
The fact that this movie still isn't available out here should be a federal crime! I really hope Discotek or GKids obtain the rights one day.


Lord Geo wrote:
Unfortunately, Angel's Egg is something that's essentially been in licensing limbo ever since the 80s, and no one's 100% sure why. Justin Sevakis thinks that maybe Roger Corman was given more control over the license than the Japanese companies intended back in the 80s for Into the Aftermath (which was a common thing, back in the day), while there's even a rumor that the paperwork regarding the licensing rights for home video outside of Japan may have been accidentally destroyed at one point, so no one's fully sure who's in charge of that over in Japan.

Many have apparently tried to license Angel's Egg over the decades, but the closest we've gotten is Arrow Video's BD for Into the Aftermath back in 2019, and even that release didn't (or maybe even couldn't) include Angel's Egg, even as a bonus.


Yeah, to be honest it's baffling for that film to not get a North American uncut release given that anime is now widely accepted in the mainstream. When Arrow Film released In the Aftermath on blu-ray in 2019, the BD didn't come with Angel's Egg uncut as a special feature. This is the same Arrow Film that released all the Showa & Heisei Gamera in one collection. So I don't see Discotek nor GKids being able to release it, here's hoping Japanese licensor will give a green light to Arrow film for a future release of Angel's Egg for a In the Aftermath's future BD (or a 4K UHD BD) re-release.
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varmintx



Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 1235
Location: Covington, KY
PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:59 am Reply with quote
I don't know how many times I've watched this movie over the past 20-25 years, but it's a lot. It's a perfect salve for a particular mood that I find myself descend into.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5514
PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2023 2:11 pm Reply with quote
I should really rewatch this, when I originally watched it i did come up with a theory to what the plot was, but I can not remember what that was.
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FireChick
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Joined: 26 Mar 2006
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2023 5:52 pm Reply with quote
I remember attempting to watch this when I was younger, but I got bored and opted out. I should probably watch it again now that I'm older.
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Cho_Desu



Joined: 27 Dec 2022
Posts: 240
PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2023 9:12 pm Reply with quote
An anime classic, and one I really enjoyed back when I was beginning to see just how experimental the medium could get. Would have loved to see it on the big screen, and I agree with everyone wishing we'd get a Blu-ray for it.
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nyaa



Joined: 27 Oct 2022
Posts: 154
PostPosted: Wed Sep 13, 2023 2:39 am Reply with quote
I have an old hkdvd of this but I haven't watched it for a long time. Maybe it's time to rewatch it.......?
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Malsang



Joined: 29 Jul 2014
Posts: 53
PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2023 8:15 am Reply with quote
I think another person in the anime community I follow, talking about this movie, put it best: "Our prayers have been answered, and the answer is 'No.'"
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