Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you an animated film directed by Seiji Mizushima and written by Gen Urobuchi. Please note that it’s gonna be a casual review of Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled from Paradise and don’t mind the nipples.
Speaking of Urobuchi, I wonder if there would be characters getting killed on this movie? Just kidding, there’s none!
So the story follows Angela Balzac as she protects the utopian society of DEVA from a hacker named Frontier Setter. In regards to DEVA, this so-called utopian society is made up of data, meaning that the inhabitants’ lives are being threatened by a mere Terran.
Of course, Angela can’t do it with her current form so she needs a physical body to travel to Earth and investigate.
Oh, and she needs a partner named Dingo and a mecha too as her mission is very dangerous. Okay, forget the robot as Frotier Setter might hack Angela’s machine and exploit it, so therefore Dingo destroys the antenna which makes her mecha into a useless piece of scrap metal!
Anyways, the story of Rakuen Tsuihou has some similarities to Suisei no Gargantia such as the protagonist visiting a desolate Earth, and adjusting to the environment as Earth and its inhabitants are living in the dark ages. Of course, there’s a difference between Rakuen Tsuihou and Gargantia as the former is lighter and softer compared to the grim-dark story of the latter. Thus, there’s no named characters that were killed on this movie.
As for the interaction between Angela Balzac and Dingo, it’s somewhat challenging as her hasty and logical behavior clashes with Dingo’s carefree lifestyle. Overtime however, she realized that DEVA’s society is flawed as there’s no freedom and their potentiality is limited by memory size and their performance. Not long after, she was arrested by DEVA due to being influenced by Frontier Setter.
Speaking of Frontier Setter, it was revealed that he not a person, but rather an AI who achieved self-awareness and wanted to become more human. Not only that, but Frotier Setter’s hacking of DEVA was a ploy to recruit people for his journey to travel across the solar system via the Genesis Ark. Despite Setter’s good intention, DEVA still treats the AI as a threat.
Despite DEVA’s warning of military action, Frotier Setter defied them by freeing Angela Balzac so she could defend him from DEVA’s forces and reach to the stars. Frotier Setter succeeds on going to space, but he’ll have to go by himself as Angela wanted to stay in Earth with Dingo as she was expelled from DEVA.
In short, Frotier Setter is a good AI who wanted to go to space and having human emotions, while DEVA portrays in a negative light as they wanted the maintain the status quo with their utopian society.
Now for the audio-visual presentation starting with the animation. Although the movie was produced by Toei Animation, the bulk of the CGI animation was done by Graphinica as they did impressively as seen with this mecha battle. And while it’s not overtly conspicuous, the art style fits the story well since we have people who are made by ones and zeroes.
While he’s no Hiroyuki Sawano when it comes to the soundtrack, NARASAKI’s music has a bombastic feel to it. Aside from the background music, there’s also the ending theme “EONIAN” by ELISA as the song sounded beautiful and it fits the movie’s heart-warming conclusion.
And finally for the cast, it has the likes of Shinichiro Miki and Hiroshi Kamiya and did a great job for their respective roles. Also it’s rare for Rie Kugimiya to play a strong-willed character like Angela Balzac whose bust size is graded C or D-cup, although she’s treated as a 16-year old teen if you consider her physical body.
Anyways, that’ll be it for this casual review of Rakuen Tsuihou as I end this post with Frontier Setter blasting off to the stars.
Overall, it was a great movie by both Seiji Mizushima and Gen Urobuchi as I enjoyed watching Rakuen Tsuihou. Therefore, it’s recommended to watch this film from start to finish!
The Anime Rambler - By Benigmatica 