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Tag: Angel’s Egg

  • The 10 Best Avant-garde Anime of All Time

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    What does it mean? What are themes? If I turn my head to the side will it make more sense? These are the sort of questions that you’d expect to overhear at the MoMA or the Guggenheim, but while watching anime? Can the genre really contain such high art multitudes? After checking out these ten films, the answer will be clear: it can. These surrealist masterpieces are some of the most artistically challenging titles ever created – surely to boggle your mind and dazzle your eyes in equal measure. If you’re looking to anime that will expand your understanding of the medium, or just wanna sound smart talking about them at a party, check out the best avant-garde anime of all time.

    Neon Genesis Evangelion

    Rei in Neon Genesis Evangelion
    (Gainax/Studio Khara)

    While Neon Genesis Evangelion begins as a relatively straightforward giant robots vs. alien kaiju sci-fi, the plot becomes more complicated as time goes on. In this near future world invaded by extraterrestrials called “Angels,” the government responds to the threat in the most rational way possible: by making middle schoolers pilot mechs to fight them. The logic only gets more absurd from there, as the Angels’ semi-divine presence begins to tear apart the fabric of reality. The series dives deep into the fractured psychology of its main characters, whose minds are equally as broken as the laws of physics that Angels seem to ignore. By the end of the series, Evangelion feels less like an anime and more like an animated version of the Book of Revelations. It’s hallucinatory, terrifying, and awe-inspiring, standard qualities of any divine being.

    FLCL

    A character gets slapped dramatically hard in the
    (Crunchyroll)

    One would think upon first glance FLCL is the anime equivalent of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but one would be wrong. The pink haired, moped riding, Rickenbacker playing Haruko Haruhara may look like an up and coming indie rocker, but she’s actually a space alien in disguise. What’s she doing on Earth? That’s hard to explain, but essentially she came to bonk a middle school boy on the head with her bass, thereby creating a portal for giant alien robots to emerge through his noggin. She’s gonna use these robots to summon a reality-warping space pirate, then consume it to become the most powerful being in the universe… I think? The plot of FLCL really doesn’t matter. Thematically it’s a story about puberty and growing up, but like music itself, it’s really all about the vibe.

    Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

    The kaleidoscopic cast of the Count of Monte Cristo anime
    (Gonzo)

    Despite being an adaption of a famously coherent story, Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo turns its 19th century namesake entirely on its ear. A tale that originally took place during the Bonaparte years, this interpretation is set in 5053 – where planet Earth is warring with the alien Eastern Empire. Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, the titular Count swears revenge on those who wronged him, and carries it out with baroque flair. Despite the substance of the story being strong, it takes a back seat to the anime’s style – a technicolor hodgepodge of texture, color and patterns. The finer points of the original narrative are deliberately blunted, making the Count’s motivations appear to follow a strange and dreamy logic. We’re not privy to the Count’s point of view like in the original novel, the anime’s story is told through the eyes of a young aristocrat onlooker. Albert understands what he sees just as little as we do, but is equally dazzled by the sight.

    Mononoke

    The medicine seller smirks calmly in a hotel while two confused patrons look on in "Mononoke"
    (Toei Animation)

    Mononoke is an ukiyo-e painting viewed under the influence of LSD – a hallucinatory good time. Set in a technicolor interpretation of Edo period Japan, the story follows a mysterious Medicine Seller as he rids the world of mononoke – evil spirits. In order to cast out a spirit, he must first ascertain its motives and origins – his understanding of the monster allows him to exorcise it. The result is a spiritual detective story, a series of dreamlike vignettes where the Medicine Seller discovers the secrets of the dead by examining skeletons in the closets of the living. Mononoke aren’t made in a vacuum, foul play is almost always involved. In a world of corrupt bureaucrats, bloodthirsty samurai, and monks devoid of faith, foul play isn’t hard to come by.

    Angel’s Egg

    A young girl with white hair looks calmly in "Angel's Egg"
    (Studio Deen)

    The quintessential avant-garde anime film, Angel’s Egg is directed by Mamoru Oshii – responsible for the similarly opaque Ghost In The Shell. Its much debated plot follows a nameless boy and girl through a decaying far-future world. She carries a large egg that she believes will hatch into an angel, while he spends his time dreaming about birds. The pair’s conversation wavers between the philosophical and the spiritual, discussing the origins of the world and the story of Noah’s Ark (told with a few embellishments from the original). It’s a stunning film that puts style entirely over substance – a cinematic experience meant to be felt rather than understood. Mythical, theological, surreal as Salvador Dali on magic mushrooms – Angel’s Egg is one of a kind.

    The Boy and The Heron

    Mahito leaving the tower with a flight of birds, ending of The Boy and The Heron
    (Studio Ghibli)

    While Hayao Miyazaki’s films have always played a little fast and loose with plot, The Boy and The Heron decides to throw it out all together. Described by the director as a deeply personal film inspired by his childhood, it’s the story of a young boy sent to live in a rural estate after the death of his mother. As he rambles about the grounds, he discovers a mysterious tower hiding a portal to another world, and an equally mysterious being that’s part man, part bird. As the boy and his man/heron companion journey into the world beyond, the plot soon unravels into a dream sequence as beautiful as it is opaque. Carnivorous parakeets, pyrokinetic women, a wizard who holds the building blocks of the world in his palm – strange beings abound. This one of Studio Ghibli’s most fantastical films to date.

    Serial Experiments Lain

    A group of middle schoolers stand in a room full of computer wires in "Serial Experiments Lain"
    (Triangle Staff)

    Serial Experiments Lain is a day in the lonely life of Lain, a middle school girl who is distant from her parents and peers. Her isolation is interrupted by an email from her classmate Chisa, which wouldn’t be weird if Chisa hadn’t committed suicide not long ago. Chisa’s letter tells Lain that she has found new life in The Wired – a digital realm resembling the early internet. Chisa isn’t alone in cyberspace, she claims that God exists deep within the circuitry. A Y2k acid trip, this anime redefines the idea of deus ex machina – God in the machine. Is it a benevolent God watching over us from a virtual world? Or is it something more strange and sinister? Hopefully the answer doesn’t break Lain’s fragile, preteen mind.

    Paprika

    A fairy woman flies through a dreamscape in "Paprika"
    (Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan)

    The poster child of avant-garde anime, Satoshi Kon’s Paprika is the dictionary definition of the genre. The story takes place in a world forever changed by the DC Mini – a device that allows users to peep into people’s dreams. Researcher Dr. Atsuko Chiba makes unsanctioned use of the machine to dive into the minds of her psychiatric patients, appearing as her dream detective alter ego Paprika. As she gallivants through people’s heads, she discovers a strange “dream parade” made up of gods, demons and household objects – and it’s spreading across subconscious minds like an infection. An anime Inception, Paprika blurs the line between the waking and the sleeping world, and then erases it entirely.

    Boogiepop Phantom

    A character stands in front of a giant clockface wearing a mystical hat and cloak in the anime 'Boogiepop Phantom'
    (Madhouse)

    One of the most chilling horror anime ever made, Boogiepop Phantom follows an ensemble cast connected by a single event: each witnessed a mysterious pillar of light appear in the sky five years after a string of serial murders. As high schoolers around the city start dropping dead once again, the terrified populace points their fingers at Boogiepop – an urban legend figure said to be death incarnate. While Boogiepop Phantom is technically the first installment in greater Boogiepop series, it’s told out of order from the perspective of multiple unreliable narrators. To truly understand the series, you’d need to take in the entire franchise – but if you’re just looking to experience the creepy, avant-garde vibe as the creator intended, start with Phantom. It’s like a haunted house ride, terrifying because you don’t know what’s going on.

    Inu-Oh

    A shot of two musical performers, from the anime "Inu-Oh"
    (Science SARU)

    Directed by Masaaki Yuasa, Inu-Oh is the story of 14th century besties Inu-Oh and Tomona. One is a dancer with a supernaturally gifted body, the other is a blind biwa player who can see ghosts. Ostracized by Japanese society, the two young outcasts do what young outcasts do best – they form a band. By performing hair metal renditions of historical tales, they begin to become celebrities – and targets of a government determined to suppress history. The film becomes an avant-garde pop concert rife with queer undertones – late 60’s David Bowie at his best. While the plot’s details are lost in the film’s exuberant style, the underlying meaning is clear: the young will always rebel against the establishment, and the establishment will always try, and fail, to put them down.

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    Sarah Fimm

    Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.

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    Sarah Fimm

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  • ‘Angel’s Egg’ Still Embodies Anime’s Wonderous Ability to Move Without Words

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    In a world where celebrated creatives tend to take influence from Mœbius and Giger, Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg feels right at home in the latter camp. Yet, somehow, it also supersedes all influences and has earned the reputation of a cult classic original video anime the industry will never see the likes of again.

    Forty years later, it’s returning to theaters, restored in 4K by Gkids and exposing a new generation to a lauded paragon of the anime industry. If ever there were a film synonymous with “show, don’t tell,” while verging on the unparsable yet deeply felt, it is Angel’s Egg—a work long whispered about in anime forum corners as something everyone must experience at least once, and a gem that feels virtually unspoilable even decades after its release.

    While it historically exists as a film that bombed and left its director out of work for a spell, only later ordained as a surreal masterpiece, what makes Angel’s Egg such an albatross of an OVA is that it is celebrated yet rarely spoken of. No one can readily say what Angel’s Egg is “about,” as if it were some hallowed-ground anime meant to be experienced rather than explained (because it is). That hushed reverence makes it a difficult film to recommend (and to review) because, despite how narratively thin the “what” is, the “why” is what lies beneath the tip of that iceberg and is what makes it a seminal film.

    Angel’s Egg follows a nameless girl who awakens like a listless Victorian child, the kind who might rest her head on a windowsill while absentmindedly nursing blossoms from the ivy crawling up her Rapunzel-esque castle wall. Except here, instead of ivy vines, she tends to a giant egg, hidden and kept warm beneath her billowy pink dress.

    Her whole existence revolves around protecting this egg as she wanders through derelict, cold-blue cityscapes, collecting glass vials and other receptacles and noshing on mason jars of jams she pilfers from abandoned houses for no discernible reason. She’s a meek little creature, clearly on some pilgrimage from on high. Along the way, she encounters a boy, also nameless, who seems to have arrived on what must be Earth from a spaceship that’s wholly Giger-esque. He’s clearly seen some things, burned out from the unsung weight of them, yet behind his dead fish eyes lingers an insatiable curiosity—the same question the audience shares: what is the deal with the egg? So he follows her.

    Their journey is one of rare words, exchanged instead through perturbed or apathetic glances, all underscored by Yoshihiro Kanno’s haunting score. What happens after that feels as open to interpretation as it is inevitable, with her tepid imploring of the boy to promise not to take her egg and the boy, lugging around an auspicious “could definitely split a giant egg”-sized staff, never offering her so much as a grunt that could be taken as him saying, “Sure thing.”

    And there lies the mesmerizing nature of Angel’s Egg: its spoken lines wouldn’t fill more than two pages of dialogue, leaving silence and imagery to carry the weight of its vexing, all-encompassing, visual presence.

    It’s almost disarming how Angel’s Egg is so hushed yet quietly thunderous. That tone is established immediately in its glacial, slow-moving opening: you sit (quite literally in the dark) in solitude before a black screen with no score, wondering if the film forgot to start. It didn’t—it’s simply in no rush, taking you down the scenic route to wherever it’s fixing to take you. Once you move past that hump, its avant-garde yet matter-of-fact beauty takes hold, and its 71-minute runtime flies by. The film practically beckons you to sit still in fascinated anticipation for even the smallest thing to occur on screen, a miracle born of its methodical, indulgent, downright lackadaisical pace. It’s the kind of rhythm that would invite you to stop and smell the flowers—except this derelict earth is bereft of Mother Nature, save for the promise of whatever lies inside its bowling-ball-sized egg.

    Director Oshii—of Ghost in the Shell fame—and studio Deen were almost terrifyingly bold to have crafted a film in 1985 with so little dialogue yet such trust in the audience to follow along. That choice is what gives the film its unparsable “all vibes” feel. A feeling that was enough to make fellow anime statesmen like Hayao Miyazaki pause, reportedly remarking that he “appreciates the effort, but it is not something others would understand” and that Oshii “goes on a one-way journey without thinking of how to get back.” Yet it’s precisely through this lack of narrative clarity, through its lush, painterly artistry—wispy Yoshitaka Amano illustrations fully committed to film—that the work sings.

    In 2025, the concept of an anime film that permits itself the luxury of leisure is just as alien as it was 40 years ago. Still, set against contemporary movies of the moment, which often lead with dazzling (at times illegible) visuals to overwhelm audiences, Angel’s Egg pumps the brakes and simply vibes, luxuriating in its immaculately crafted, overtly bleak, and oppressive atmosphere. It’s the kind of film where gestures and micro-expressions carry a ton of weight. A curl of the lips, a mistrustful stare—all tiny cues that speak volumes between two companions who rarely speak but remain bound together.

    Its artistry extends to the film’s ornate, impressionistic backgrounds, where the gurgle of a brook is juxtaposed with the strained chugging of machinery as tanks crawl through towering buildings on cobbled roads, which feels like being pulled into the undertow of the anime’s visuals. Angel’s Egg is rife with ephemeral moments audiences wouldn’t usually pause to appreciate in their daily lives. Yet, here they become wide-eyed at the resplendent vestiges of beauty in a desolate world. All the while, two strangers wander through this grim world as the rest of the film plays like a lucid dream where statuesque men spear fish the shadows of whales dancing about the skyline of its entombed city.

    Angel's Egg Gkids
    © Gkids

    Angel’s Egg is the film equivalent of a one-way mirror, a surface onto which you project meaning and, in perpetuity, discover new things. Some will run with the Noah’s Ark analogy of its derelict world, others with its alien, militaristic invaders as allegory—fodder for the inevitable YouTube explainer with red arrows promising “details your plebeian brain missed.” But the film resists being chewed and digested that way. It is Lynchian in its refusal to be solved, a work that invites interpretation without ever demanding it.

    Its imagery suggests environmental ruin—nature long fossilized, eons gone, with only two living figures wandering what remains. At its center lies the egg, a Schrodinger-like entity: perhaps harboring the promise of life in a lifeless world, maybe nothing more than another hollow shell mirroring the emptiness around it.

    While its setup is as straightforward as it is ambiguous, its ending opens into a vastness of interpretation, teeming with meaning yet refusing to settle into one. Is it an environmentalist call to action? A religious shakedown of hubris and humanity’s folly? Or a secret third thing—something ineffable, tugging at the spirit but beyond articulation? Whatever it is, Angel’s Egg is nothing short of a religious experience, a once-in-a-lifetime beauty of visuals and music lying in wait that everyone owes themselves the chance to witness at least once, if only to understand the unstatable miracle of what anime, at its most daring, can be.

    Angel’s Egg is playing in theaters now.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Isaiah Colbert

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