Angel's Egg
| Angel's Egg | |
A picture showing the unnamed girl.
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天使のたまご (Tenshi no Tamago) |
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| Genre | Avant-garde Fantasy |
| Original video animation | |
| Directed by | Mamoru Oshii |
| Produced by | |
| Written by |
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| Music by | Yoshihiro Kanno |
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| Released | December 15, 1985 |
| Runtime | 71 minutes |
Angel's Egg (天使のたまご Tenshi no Tamago?) is a Japanese original video animation released by Tokuma Shoten on December 15, 1985. It was a collaboration between popular artist Yoshitaka Amano and director Mamoru Oshii. It features very little spoken dialogue. Its sparse plot and visual style have led to it being described as "animated art rather than a story".
Angel's Egg follows the life of an unnamed young girl living alone in an abandoned city. She cares for a large egg which she hides under her dress, protecting it while scavenging the decrepit Neo-Gothic/Art Nouveau cityscape for water and food. In a prologue, an unnamed young man watches as an orb-shaped vessel, decorated with thousands of goddess-like sculptures, descends from the sky. Awakened by the orb's alarm, the girl begins her day of scavenging, but soon crosses paths with the man on a wide street traveled only by roving tanks. Frightened by the man, who looks like a soldier and carries a threatening cross-shaped device over his shoulder, the girl runs off down an alley. When she returns to investigate, the man has left. She resumes searching for food and glass bottles, avoiding the ominous figures of men clutching harpoons which scatter the cobbled streets.
After a moment of respite to eat her findings, the girl spots the man and approaches him. He turns and surprisingly produces her egg from underneath his cape; she had unthinkingly abandoned it on the plaza where she was eating. He instructs the girl to "Keep precious things inside you or you will lose them," and returns the egg. When asked what she believes is inside the egg, the girl asserts that she can't tell him. The man then suggests breaking the egg to find out, which incenses the girl and drives her storming away, only to be diligently pursued by the man.
Eventually the chase gives way to the pair bonding, as the stoic fishermen figures spring to life and frighten the girl. The fishermen race after enormous shadows of coelacanth-like fish that swim across the surfaces of streets and buildings, lobbing their harpoons at the brick and stone. As the shadows swim away, the girl explains that while the fish are gone, the men persist in hunting. The pair wait out the commotion within a vast, church-like theatre decorated with stained windows of fish.
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Wikipedia