Angel’s Egg

One of the earliest films from Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Angel’s Egg has an almost mythical status – a mysterious and mystical anime that audiences rarely get the opportunity to see. A version with English subtitles was created for LIFF 2009 and we are delighted to bring back Angel’s Egg as part of our expanded Planet Japan celebration for 2021. Set in a vast abandoned city, Angel’s Egg follows the journey of a girl guarding a giant egg and her soldier companion who tells biblical-like tales.

‘The girl believes in the inside of the egg, but those contents are something that is not here now. In other words, if you don’t split the egg, you will not know what is inside. Because of that, there was nothing inside when the boy broke the egg. The girl kept on living while believing in the “things that do not exist”. I think that the egg might represent ‘dreams’ or ‘hopes’. That is, the things which aren’t here at the moment and only exist in the realm of possibility… This type of human relations [between the girl and the boy] appears in Tennessee Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’. There’s a girl who is always waiting for something, then a certain man turns up and eventually leaves. It’s a story about meeting others and the world becoming new.’

Director Mamoru Oshii, from an interview in Japanese translated at dijeh.tumblr.com.