Rakuen Tsuiho: Expelled From Paradise

A great philosophical journey wrapped up in a futuristic adventure with charismatic characters and a bittersweet ending.

This movie was fantastic all the way around. With all the new developments with AI, ChatGPT, ect its great to go back to sci-fi concept movies and see the parallels. The story in this movie speaks directly to your heart and forces you to ask important questions. The animation in this movie is great, so fluid and dynamic, never seen anything like it. Action choreography is amazing, super intense fast paced combat. The little details are great to watch again seeing what you missed. The music is incredible, I loved the songs, currently stuck in my head right now. It binds the atmosphere, the characters, the scenes. This movie really moves me, and its a visual masterpiece imo. If you like cyberpunk anesthetics like The Matrix, a bit of diesel punk Mad Max style, and over all anime giant robot action. Don't skip this movie!

Story line was nice and seemingly fresh from my memory of films. Animation focused far to much on sexualizing' the female protagonist that it was embarrassing to watch pieces. But overall a solid anime movie.

Good watch, will likely watch again, and can recommend for anime fans that don't mind some fan service. This is a great, Matrix like premise for a story, but let's the get the obvious stuff out of the way: yes, her outfit is ridiculous, and while the idea that they can grow clones and harvest them prematurely, it was a very unnecessary that her body be the equivalent of 16 years of age, I'd even go as far as to argue that it would be detrimental if all the hormones and everything are balanced naturally. THAT aside, I love the concepts that are used in this: the technological aspects of digitizing humans, having A.I.: the moral philosophical quandries it presents about freedom, society, and fixed resources. The biggest problem is part of the premise, the entire time the characters are floundering for position in this discussion of dealing with each others' cultures so you never really feel like you're completely on anyone's side. That shifts a little in the 3rd act, but no by much. But if you like action: robots, gunfire, explosions, and / or cool sci-fi stuff, this anime has it.

Somewhat overcomplicates or rather somehow simplifies "The Matrix" as its own only original spin among other dystopian narratives, environmentally damaged and technologic, being mixed into one scattershot, therefore giving the charismatically likable characters the driver's seat over the general plot proceeding. Aside from the convoluting flaw, it is your average outlandish anime picture providing general entertainment value riveted by the exciting sequences, fun soulful performances, and decent thematic communication while typically well-animated – although questioning the voyeuristic certainty. (B+)

I wanted to like it, I really did but unfortunately this just isn't that great of an anime movie. Its starts off okay with a cool little action scene, an interesting setting and some good looking animation. Unfortunately it falls apart quickly. The dialogue is horrible and there is a ton of it. It feels like 80% of the movie is boring exposition with a subpar action scene thrown on the end. Too bad ... this could have been something cool. Skip it!

Gen Urobuchi is a writer I like, but even with that thrown out there he's very repetitive in his writing. At times, he creates fascinating worlds, and characters, but then make them speak by info dumping, and reiterating the same topics as if viewers missed them the first time. They speak like plot devices instead of like people. So Gen Urobuchi opted to create a world that was formerly filled with humans, and now are just data. Here is story written in that kind of world. A world without consistency, nor intelligent life forms. Just a strings of badly written events. The opening sequence of the film is confusing. We're shown a beach, our main character in a swimsuit relaxing, someone hacks the beach, our protagonist throws her drink, and stops this hacking by being naked. Don't worry, the event turns out to be pointless. I eventually found out by the end of the film that it lead up to nothing. Absolutely nothing. A conflictless story that forces in conflict in its final act just because. No logical reasons behind it besides the fact it wasted more than half of its duration on nothing related to the main story, and might as well try to end things with some action no matter how nonsensical it seems. Minutes after failing to stop the hack it is established that Deva, this spaceship where 98% of humans resides, has been hacked by this same hacker, Frontier Setter, 184 times. So Deva has push aside the notion of improving their security, but it took them approximately 184 times of being hacked to finally decide to send one of their own agent to Earth to capture the hacker. So we got an advance system/civilization run entirely by super advance computers whom all take the appearances of Gods contradicting the notion this is an advance, smart, intelligence system when it reacts this slow. At this point (seven minutes in), you begin to question if the system got hacked that many times by a single entity how come a large amount of people are still living in Deva? Not only that, but instead of assigning one of Deva best agents on the assignment Deva assigns 3rd class agent Angela Balzsac. There's obviously much better agents that can accomplish the task. They (the computers Gods of Deva) established Deva already has an S ranking Deva agent on Earth. It would speed up the process by giving this assignment to Zarik Kajiwara, the S rank agent on Earth, who's familiar with Earth, and despite being told he has a bad reputation is clearly reliable due to the fact he is an S rank Deva agent. Why Deva uses numbers, and letters to determine an agent ranking is beyond me. Seriously, is the number 1 or 0 much higher in ranking than S rank agents? Our main characters is named Angela Balzac, which is the most respectable thing about her. She's a stupid character who for some inexplicable reason knows to hack which would require understanding of simple terms like Script Kiddies, Black Hats, and words like Daemon for simple function. Yet, this same character does not understand people don't eat sand which is the first thing she does when landing on Earth. These two things don't belong to the same character. Ballsack (as I am referring to her out of the lack respect I, and writer Gen Urobuchi do not share for her) is introduce in a beach scene in a bikini saying it's because of work? Wouldn't it make more sense to be in a place that can overlook CPU, servers, hotspots, you know any area that'll actively help you better spot when there's a hacker in the system. I would wouldn't be questioning this if the film itself provided decent world building. With that absent, there's no understanding on the status quo of this world at all. Ballsack goes from one scene to another completely inept in her abilities. Her human partner, Zarik Kajiwara, has to explain to her how using her mecha from Deva would expose her spot to Frontier Setter. Why Ballsack didn't think of this is inconsistent with the claim she's a 3rd class rank agent close to being promoted to a high ranking position. If that's a high position in this world it further question her abilities to do this job, and Deva security too. She needed to be told by S rank agent Zarik Kajiwara to do this instead of her doing it on her own. After being told using this Mecha would reveal her position to this intelligent hacker the next logical step would be for Ballsack to put on some different pieces of clothing to blend into Earth crowd, and not stick out. However, she wears a leotard, garter, elbow-length gloves, and knee boots for the entire film. Everyone else on Earth else wear normal pieces of clothing, but this doesn't matter in the long run either since this does not catch the attention of Frontier Setter at any point. I'm meant to believe Frontier Setter singlehandedly hacked into this super advance ship called Deva, which apparently has high security, yet the fact Frontier Setter is unable to detect Ballsack who is looking for him in this city without changing her appearance goes against what's established. Frontier Setter has other robots he could control, and taking into account he hacked into Deva 184 times this is also inconsistent with said intelligent of the character. As far as characterization goes he received nothing substantial besides questioning if human traits can be found in machines. This often used plot point in sci-fi would have been fine if the film actually explored it. Another annoying trait of Ballsack character is her bragging how life is better on Deva, and how life on Earth pales in comparison. Ballsack mentions that old rock music wasn't considered worth keeping by Deva. Meaning Deva intentionally didn't keep information on simple stuff like sand does not taste good, but kept the information that made Ballsack be naked when stopping a hacker in cyberspace? The same information that does not tell her human body can get tired, and sick. If Deva was a such a great place to live at than it should have preserve as much information as possible not just be selective about it. Say, if somebody on Deva like rock, and Deva didn't have it that person is out of like. However, on Earth you can find rock music if you like. If not, simply ignore it not discard it like Deva does. As I mentioned earlier, due to poor world building Anglea claims of Deva being better than Earth don't add much to the film when the bare minimal about the world is not established. Zarik Kajiwara is the most likable character, but even he has inconsistency in his character. He says himself in the movie he's afraid of heights, yet there is a scene where he's on top of an abandon building stringing his guitar. Unlike tsundere Ballsack, Kajiwara is competent at his job to the point he should have been the protagonist of the film. For starter, he blends into the crowd unlike Ballsack who sticks out. Another thing is he knows the area, can collect information on Frontier Setter location, all while being off Frontier Setter radar. This guy, is basically babysitting this deadweight agent named Ballsack to make sure she doesn't kill herself. This allows me to sympathize with Kajiwara because not only does he have to do most of Ballsack job for her, but also make sure Ballsack doesn't end up killing herself. Sadly, there's not much to his character either besides he likes rock music, and living on Earth. This about as close as the film gets to producing anything resembling good quality. Our final character is Frontier Setter himself. The film sets him up as this intelligent hacker which does make you wonder why is he attacking Deva. Unfortunately the answer essentially amounts to "you want to go on this road trip bro?" for his motivation. It's a letdown when this is reveal because the hour building up to this were spent on characters talking about nothing related to the plot. It was either debating where it's better to live rendered into a pointless argument because of terrible world building, or being all philosophical with subjects on eating till you're full, liking a specific brand of rock music, and being sick like a human. Frontier Setter is falsely presented as the antagonist in this story, and when there's no ill attention from it then there should have been something the characters learned from their journey. Ballsack does eventually learn the value of being human, and having a human body just because. There's not a single good experience she had on her journey before finally finding Frontier Setter. She has her mecha destroyed, and sold for parts, was nearly raped, got sick while on Earth, became very tired, hungry, and talked to Zarik Kajiwara discussing the current affair of their job. Somehow all of this made Ballsack change over a new perception of human living. It's explained later on in the film that human consciousness was transferred into data. How exactly that happened, when it happened, and how long it's been going on for is up to anyone imagination. They (Deva) could have used "Bipolar Magnetic Reversal Theory" to accomplish that as far as anyone is concerned. These simple questions needed to understand the setting are never answered. After the opening credits, Angela Ballsack crashes on Earth, and fights giant Centipede like aliens with a giant robot. These bugs appear in this one, and only scene throughout the film. Are these bugs a common issue on Earth? Is there any other species on Earth that make people fearful to live on Earth? If so, then the idea of 98% of Earth population living in a computer would make sense. Except, there is no world building on Earth either! While seeing the film I assumed it was created by A1-Pictures because of various ass shots, but nope I was wrong. This film was brought to us by Toei Animation, and Nitroplus who really wanted to outdo them with ass shots. All the budget for the film clearly didn't go into the animation. Whenever character speak it's only up, and down motion which looks unnatural. I'm guessing the budget likely went into developing bouncing boob technology for Ballsack character before abandoning the idea when realizing Toei, nor Nitroplus had the technology to make it happen. So they opted for ass shots just incase the audience forgets Ballsack has an ass. When the characters are still the models don't look bad, but the low-framerate in motion makes everything look disjointed, and delayed. Possibly making you wonder if whatever device you're watching it on is laggy. The only time the animation looks natural is when the framerate is bumped up in the action scenes. In these action scenes the motion is fast, and whatever moving looks somewhat natural. These moments don't last long, nor are they very flashy in their presentation. Most of the film best moments of competent animation is in the climax, but given how pointless the climax is it undermines what happening on-screen, and ultimately would have been pointless if the writing wasn't so awful. The only thing about the animation I wouldn't complain about are the backgrounds are decent looking since they don't move. That would be it as far praises go. Voice acting in both Japanese, and English languages are competent while virtually sharing the same traits. For starter, both Rie Kugimiya in Japanese, and Wendee Lee in the English voiced Angela Balzac are equally annoying. Wendee Lee is higher pitched in her portrayal which makes her more grating when listening to her brag about how better life is on Deva. She doesn't change her tone regardless what her character is meant to feel in any scene either. Rie Kugimiya doesn't fare any better in the leading role. Instead of being grating her portrayal ends up being bland. At least Wendee Lee portrayal made me feel something about the character. Sure it is mostly hatred, but it's certainly better than Rie Kugimiya who leaves no impression when having played other tsunderes. Nothing about Rie Kugimiya performance stands out besides she sounds no different from a bland tsundere character. Zarik Kajiwara is played by Shinichiro Miki in Japanese, and Steve Blum in the English dub. On both audio tracks these two actors are easily best actors. Steve Blum especially operating on autopilot with his cool, laid back voice. Blum voice goes hand in hand with Zarik Kajiwara personality for an easy cool portrayal. Miki also does the same so not of a much difference in performances. Frontier Setter is voice by Hiroshi Kamiya in Japanese, and Johnny Yong Bosch in the English dub. None of them end up being better than the other voice actor. Johnny Yong Bosch is simply wasted in the role that demand nothing of him. The character has no complex emotions, or personality so it's more disappointing seeing Johnny Yong Bosch in the role than it is a bad performance. He doesn't sound robotic at all in the role. Whereas Hiroshi Kamiya does sound robotic in his portrayal. Fitting the role, but nothing demanding about. The script is different in both languages. I wouldn't advise seeing the film in any language given how bad it is. Reading the subs draws more issues to its writing while the English dub has some bad audio mixture. In English, some wording are changed to make the story appears less idiotic than it already is, but also end changing the meaning in the film in general. Hearing 98% of humans have "cyber personality" doesn't seem like a big deal compare in Japanese where it says 98% of humans are "artificial intelligence". Creating different problems for itself. At best, it's most tolerable to mute the film, and read subtitles. Not the even soundtrack composed by Narasaki is noticeable in the film. It's heavy on electronics, techno, and rock, but all equally forgettable. Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise will leave you with many philosophical questions. The most important one being "What did I just watch?". Don't let Gen Urobuchi, and Seiji Mizushima (director of the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime) names trick you into seeing this film. If this is the standard Japan wants to set for every 3D animated film that come out of their country they're in serious trouble. The general low-framerate in animation, lack of any thought into the writing, and nothing substantial to remember is inexcusable in an era where the likes of Pixar, and Dreamworks Animation have made better 3D animated movies. If the animation isn't flashy enough to make it entertaining to watch than it should at least contain good writing to keep viewers engaged. When you got neither, this film here stands as an example of that. You can also find me at. Letterboxd: http://letterboxd.com/cinema_maniac/ Wordpress: https://personafication.wordpress.com/

Will you join me on this journey? In the future existence has drastically changed and most living beings are robots with transferable souls. One of the beings comes down and needs to work with a human to accomplish her mission. She keeps talking to the man to try and understand why humans enjoy being humans. The way he sees the world opens the robots mind. "We're playing hide and seek here. Are you trying to scream here I am?" Seiji Mizushima, director of 51 episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist and two Fullmetal Alchemist movies, delivers Expelled from Paradise. The storyline for this picture is entertaining with some great action scenes and animation. The script is cliché but I enjoyed watching the film unfold. "Perfect timing. I'm in a bad mood." I came across this some time ago on Netflix and had to add it to my queue. This was okay and contains interesting characters and some awesome action. The plot wasn't good enough to make this a must see anime, but it is worth a viewing. "Decoys are handy in a hunt." Grade: C+

Some cool ideas, but with an annoying protagonist and unnecessary fan-service, this movie feels like wasted potential. The Dingo and Frontier Setter characters were its saving grace.

I came across this anime movie on Netflix, just by chance while I was browsing. Netflix has been on point when it comes to providing subbed and dubbed anime. I happened to watch the english dub version(for those that it matters to). Some minor, or not so minor, spoilers are in here. You are warned. Where to start. I think the first thing I'll address is the core concept of the story. It is a post apocalyptic world, and humanity has to take to space in order to survive. In fact, according to one character, it is revealed that 98% of humanity is now on DEVA. DEVA being an orbiting network hub of platforms above Earth. Floating above the planet isn't the most original idea, but it does have a unique twist--humanity has been digitized. While humans are born--I'm assuming Matrix style via artificial means--they live out their lives in cyber space. It reminded me a bit of the concept behind Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. So this idea peaked my interest enough to keep watching. Someone or something is hacking DEVA, the cyber space that most of humanity lives in. Security Officer Angela, who attempts but fails to catch the hacker in cyberspace, is charged to find the hacker--on Earth. This means getting an artificial body. Again, a cool concept, because I thought they might just be bodies plugged in, Matrix style (man that movie is hypercannon at this point), but that isn't the case. Instead, a clone is made for the officers from their DNA, and then sent down to Earth. Normally "Lolita" isn't my thing--Angela is a woman in her late "20's," but chooses to accelerate the growth and go down in a late teen body instead. Normally I would throw this up to fanservice, but Angela has a good reason for it, as viewers find out. At first it seems like she might just be hyper-competitive, and the 8 hours or so she gets coming down earlier with a younger body could be huge. But there is another reason--those who contribute more to DEVA get more, and those that don't might even be expelled from the system. In other words, death. This, along with the fact that the other main character, Dingo, makes fun of the lolita vibe in the movie itself made me forgive them for it. If you can poke fun at something you yourself are doing, it can help make it ok in my book(to a point). Actually, I even came to embrace her as a older child, because in terms of experience in the real world, Angela is a child. I'd compare it to someone who is knowledgeable book smart wise, but she has little "real" experience and therefore no "street smarts." She's too smart and knows too much so she isn't totally ignorant or useless. But she has limited to no experience in the real world. It is implied from what she said that she has been on missions to Earth before, but it isn't clear. Regardless, she isn't Earth savvy, so her exterior ends up reflecting more of her real self. The story continues and the two of them discover that the hacker is an AI. One who has lived through the disasters that forced most of humanity into space. Its/his/her goal is to complete a project to push humanity into spacetravel. But, he doesn't wish to force humans from DEVA into it, only find willing volunteers. DEVA leaders don't take kindly to this. One thing leads to another, Angela and Dingo help Faction go into space, and Angela ends up on Earth after fighting DEVA. All in all a heartwarming tale. The artwork is superb, and since I've gotten used to more 3D anime styles like this one, from Knights of Sidonia, or the newer Gundam series, I wasn't bothered by it like I used to. Angela sticks out like a sore thumb on Earth, and her costume is sort of "revealing." But it isn't over the top, and there are barely if any fanservice shots, so I can roll with it. The story is nice, but frankly, I think the movie would have been better off as a multi OVA series or a full fledged anime series. Remember the catastrophe? It is called the NanoHazard, but we get little information other than it happened about a hundred years ago, it forced humanity off planet, and apparently mutated some insects. But the viewer doesn't get much more than that. We are left with too many questions and few to no answers. What was Nano Hazard? Was it nano machines? Was there a war, or just an accident? How was DEVA conceptualized? How does the digitizing process even work? Why are some humans still on the surface? Are there many mutated creatures, or just some? As someone who loves a fulfilling story more than anything, this plot holes bothered me. Despite these shortcomings, I watched the movie until its end, and I rather enjoyed finding an anime movie that was new. I would definitely suggest to anyone to watch it, as Angela and Dingo are fairly likeable, and nothing seems to farfatched in terms of plot development. The fact that there is not enough information about the world prior to the movie leaves too many holes in the lore to really give it a perfect rating. But I'd certainly enjoy maybe getting an anime series that goes more in depth to this world. The story has great potential upon what is already built.