A few days ago I thought about watching Summer Wars again, which I quite liked and then gave Origin (what an exceptionally pointless name, even for a movie title which tend to be awful anyway) a try instead (can’t figure out the connection now, might just be IMDB’s „people also liked“-function). And since it’s produced by Gonzo, the people who brought us the fantastic all-female lead Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing, I thought this might be worth watching.
But I was wrong. While the the movie has an interesting setting (a post-apocalyptic-world, who would not like that?) and some nice ideas like the people turning into trees, plus two cool female characters, the mayor(ess?) of the town and the soldier lady, the story wasn’t too surprising or original and the character-design ranges from cliche to ridiculous (the armor! -_____-).
My main problem was the ending, I was positively surprised by – SPOILER ALERT! – Agito dying at 3/4 of the movie and I thought this would finally be the time when there’s some character development in Toola. This would have been the chance to make her a strong person, going back to the town alone and setting things right, learning to come to terms with this new world and the forest. The volcano could have waited a little with erupting so she could get down the mountain (how is a moving volcano supposed to work anyway, that makes no sense). What an awesome twist that would have been: main character sacrifices himself so the sidekick can finish the quest? Nice one! It would also been a good reversal of the „sidekick/lover dies in the end to awake righteous anger in the main character“-trope.
But no, male main character comes back from the dead (ffs …) and mysterious sidekick from the past can keep on being saved and passive (aside from some random running around alone in dangerous places) like she did the whole fucking movie, except for when she decided to go with the bad, bad industrial people (which wasn’t a decision really, because they’d probably taken her by force anyway) and for three minutes Agita was dead (where she only did what he told her to do). So, so disappointing. And what was this scene with „women are allowed to wave at each other after being encouraged by males to do so“ in the end? Creepy!
So, sadly, don’t bother with this one. Fam the Silver Wing is nice though. But beware of the eastern European girl with the strange one curl anime-haircut. She actually might have been the main reason for me not to watched that ’til the end.
