Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Absolutely Fantastic

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film had an intriguing idea and story-line. But unfortunately they have produced a lack luster effort. With a quite unfocused story and slowly paced.The story is set 300 years in the future, in a i would say post - apocalyptic landscape. A young boy/man Agito comes upon a girl frozen in time Tula wakes her up, which could tip the balance in an ongoing war between two factions. One whom wants to live peacefully with the forest and one that wants to bring the earth back, to the way it was. just by typing up the synopsis here, again gives me the feeling of a good idea gone to waist. One of the main things that bothered me were the way the two factions were put across, as the people who want to destroy the forest are obviously the bad guys, which is the obvious environmental message the film wants to put across and showed no subtlety while it slapped you across the face with this message, but the forest which has some mythical druids protecting it, come across to me as quite like a dictatorship holding the power over human kind. The pacing of the film was very slow with some action scenes you would hope lift the momentum for the picture which actually turned out quite bland and predictable.The film is beautifully drawn with the huge landscapes being absolutely stunning and competing with Studio Ghibli on that front. The dubbing was pretty good and the musical score was not disappointing.Overall an OK film, with decent elements, and an idea there that could work very well but not quite on this movie.

...who wrote this script and came up with these stagnant characters???I watched this in sub and then pretended it was translated badly. Dub is fine if you can really stand it. I preferred being able to choose whether I wanted to read the rubbish or not.Lots of awkward expressions and reactions from characters with a rushed beginning like first impressions are just trite moments in time. I suggest if you watch this anime, switch off the part of your brain that enjoys witty or interesting dialogue and any dramatic tension and get ready for major plot dump.((Spoiler!)) It seems to pick up somewhere near the end but I think that's just because I was listening to the amazing soundtrack and watching the pretty visuals with branches growing out of people's arms and volcanoes springing out of the ground. The story ends with a wonderful deus ex machina as the the main character energetically transforms into a tree absorbing the baddie with him!Still, for some reason the movie seems to stick in my head as something worthwhile. Probably my artistic side of my brain being stimulated by all the colours and sound. Reminded me of a Miyazaki without the flare or intelligence and I'm sure the writer had a field day cutting and pasting from Nausicaa and Laputa.

I enjoyed the idea behind Origin, which is a lot like Avatar and many of Hayao Miyazai's films, it talks about how greed and technology and the misuse of our resources will be our down fall, which is something I rather enjoy especially as seeing as how every year that passes we loose more and more open grounds and forests. Its sad how forests that used to cover most of our nation is now populated, by cities and greedy people that have no problem with wiping out populations and creatures that have lived there for long before people existed.I'm a little confused as to the role of the druids and their role in this story, which wasn't really explained. Also the practicality of an entire volcano being a hidden base seems rather absurd, the amount of energy it would take to move the mountain would be monumental and seems nearly impossible to store for how many centuries or years and expect all that equipment to not be effect is rather absurd.Unfortunately this is an idea that's been done over and over again, and it gets a little annoying about how the story ideas are all close to the same without any original ideas to add to it. I also was not a big fan of this style of art, but over all it was a good film.

Having heard from a friend that this anime film was well worth watching I decided to check it out for myself. As soon as it started I was immediately impressed by the stunning animation. The story is set in the distant future three hundred years after an environmental cataclysm which destroyed most civilisation and left mankind competing with the now sentient forests for survival. In a town built above the remains of a destroyed city two boys, Agito and his friend Cain, descend deep into the old city to get water from a well; here an accident leads to Agito being washed deep into the heart of the old city. Here he discovers a girl in a hibernation chamber and awakens her. She is Toola and she has been there since the time of the cataclysm. They become friends but news of her discovery soon spreads to a neighbouring city where another person from the past is keen to get his hands on her and activate a device that will fix the mistakes he believes he made that gave the forest its sentience. In order to rescue Toola Agito must join with the forest himself; something that will give him superhuman strength but risks him becoming a tree if he loses control of his new strengths.I'm glad a listened to my friend as I found this to be an enjoyable film; most of the animation looks great even if some of the 3D CGI contrasts a little too much with the traditional animation that makes up most of the film. The characters are enjoyable and don't fall into the cliché of having a black and white morality; even the antagonist is doing what he does because he believes that is the right way to save civilisation. The environmental message might seem a little heavy handed to some but the plot justifies it and I don't think it got too preachy. People who want action scenes should be happy too as there is quite a lot including plenty of explosions and a fight between Agito and the antagonist.These comments are based on watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles.