Rakuen Tsuihou

Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise, is Gen Urobuctcher's (sorry, couldn't resist the bad jokes) new original animated film that explores the meaning of humanity and personal reality. The movie offers a few interesting twists and introduces some extremely intriguing ideas about sci-fi and humanity itself.

This movie is about our cute female protagonist, Balzac Angela (voiced by Kugimiya Rie so end of review, 10/10 :P ) sent from Deva, a new world created based on data after a certain apocalypse in earth that turned the whole world into a never-ending desert (portrayed as the wild west), to stop a certain someone or something who was ... recently hacking into the Deva system to convey a certain message that contradict's Deva's values. Angela, along with our male protagonist "dandyman" Zarik Kajiwara, sets on a mission that will redefine the many things that She was taught on the Deva.

Story : 7/10 As explained earlier, the story tries to explore many different themes and tries to convey them in many different ways; however, the story is not extremely smooth and well told mainly because nothing in the movie was explored well enough.

Character ： 7/10 Much like the story, simply underdeveloped. There was pretty much only 3 in the movie characters and none of them were extremely well developed, but being underdeveloped does not mean they are boring characters. All of these characters have a very lovable personality and these personalities are well portrayed through their actions. Regarding the 3DCG, I actually think it contributes to the storytelling extremely well mostly due to the story partially being the exploration of the difference between a digital reality and a traditional human being.

Sound : 9/10 The Soundtracks are very well developed, playful, and fits the situation very well. The voice actor/actresses fit the roles extremely well and the ending song is also great.
PS: don't skip the ending. Enjoy the song a little and wait for a tiny cute and heartwarming treat at the end :)

Art : 9/10 The whole film is made in “3D" modeled animation. Like a refined version of (RWBY) It was well made so it was not too distracting most of the times. Some of the scenes had awesome cinematography and some other scenes are extremely well drawn. Also, the fighting scenes are extremely entertaining and contains some great CGI

Enjoyment ：8/10 The way this story is told could get boring at times, but some of the really lovable characters and original ideas from the anime can really bring the audiences back. Again, great cinematography and mech fight scenes.

Overall : 8/10 Only if the story and characters were more developed. Everything else could be better, but they were already quite nice. I would definitely suggest this movie to anyone who is looking for something a bit different and doesn't hate the 3D animation.

Final words： I really like this animated film a lot, and it has a 10/10 on my personal ratings because some parts of it really does deserve that score. Sadly, there are too many things in the anime that prevents me from doing so in a formal review.

I thoroughly enjoyed Rakuen Tsuihou, as well as Gen Urobuchi's other works, namely Psycho-Pass, Madoka, and Gargantia.

As an introductory aside, I want to start by strongly disagreeing with people who highlight Urobuchi's tendency to kill off character ("the Urobutcher") or his aptitude for plot twists as his main appeal. They are not. What draws me -- and I believe many other viewers -- to Urobuchi's works is their philosophical undercurrents; everything in his films and shows touch upon some aspect of society, humanity, or morality, and the story is often a sidekick (although an exciting one). For example, Psycho-Pass is focused on the impact on ... having a benevolent, all-knowing, but tyrannical autocracy on society; while Gargantia revolves around reflections of a soldier faced with peace and prosperity, and learning to throw away his inculcated beliefs.

With that said, I think Rakuen Tsuihou's main appeal is along the same lines. There are no real plot twists in this movie, besides perhaps the identity of Frontier Settler itself (for the longest time I expected this nefarious hacker to be some evil genius or something). Everything generally works out the way you expect, and I think it's fair to say that most of us know, going in, that Angela won't stay with Deva for long.

But this movie is not about some futuristic sci-fi world of people living in virtual reality; sure, that's the backdrop, but that's not what it's really about. It's main focus is on the dichotomy of Angela and Dingo, and the two societies they represent. This is a dichotomy that exists in today's world just as much as it does in the world of the movie. These two societies might not be spatially segregated as in the movie, but we still have it: the increasing disparity of the haves and have-nots.

Every commentary on this issue in today's society talks about it as if it's a problem to be solved, as if there are only negatives. We live in the world where ambition and the drive to succeed are unconditionally praised, even when that drive leaves us with no time for relaxing or pleasure or trying to truly learn what we are meant to do. I see Rakuen Tsuihou as a commentary on this, and while Angela doesn't exactly do the best job of defending her "high-society" ambitions, I think the movie as a whole does a great job illustrating how this sort of all-consuming career ambition can leave us blind to the true pleasures of life.

This was a travesty. An absolute insult to any mecha fan or Urobutcher fan. It's hard to believe great talent, be it writing or VA or w/e, were all roped in for this mess. All at a high budget too.

Lets begin with our main heroine, Balzac, whose name is hilarious, has no redeeming features beyond her stupid funny name. She is the embodiment of every cliched terrible tsundere character rolled in and condensed into one terrible package of fanservice. She is unlikeable, she makes poor and questionable decisions, and she barely contributes to the plot, of which there is very little of. She whines so ... much in this I wished that somehow, in Butcher tradition, shed be silenced in one way or another (It didn't happen). She's nothing but a useless fanservice girl. Alongside Balzac is generic bounty hunter secondary protagonist guy, who've you've also seen a thousand times before. He's the epitome of genericness, he knows what's right, and serves as one of the competent members of the group who does stuff properly at least. And lastly is Claptrap, who's there to prove his existence to the world or something. Claptrap is easily one of the less horrible characters in this (alongside that dealer person I like somehow). Heck, that one exposition scene with him is one of the only ones I liked.

Plot wise this whole farce is barebones to its core. In the beginning, with the help or closeups of Balzac's tits and arse, the film seems to hint at something more than just a typical Hur-Dur authority is evil Hur-Dur kind of movie. It isn't. It is as generic as generic can get. If anything the biggest plot twist in this is how obvious the plot twist is as that authoritarian totalitarian entity turns out to be , surprise, not as benevolent as previously thought! And for a mecha anime, there really isn't much in mecha action, hell, less than 30 minutes in and the mecha is sold for christ sakes.

I used the term "anime" throughout very lightly. Most of the film's character models are terrible 3D cell-shaded models that greatly resemble MMD stuff. They greatly feel out of place amongst the (I must admit) very well done backgrounds, and amongst the 2D extras. Animation wise, the 3D character models also seem to operate at a different framerate from the rest of the backgrounds. I dunno a good way to describe it, but it feels out of place. If anything it feels like a video game at times. A pretty video game I give it that.

The fight scenes, few as they are , are terribly done. While on paper they seem pretty decent, a high budget mecha on mecha action kinda thing, most of the action scenes are messily edited, with unnecessary closeups that detract from the main fight. Also every few minutes, the fight deviates to give us a closeup of Balzac's tits and arse and her screaming. The fights aren't particularly clever either, most of them are just your standard fare, no planning or strategy here, just brute force mostly.

Overall, a better way of spending your time in a similar manner would be to load up MMD and mess around with it for an hour or so. Because hey, you'd get more enjoyment out of that than this. (Speaking of MMD, all the female character models feel like they're lifted from vocaloid).

2/10

Fun fact : this film can't even be used to play butcher bingo properly. It only has like 4 out of 25 squares.

Gen Urobuchi is usually referred to as the "Christopher Nolan of Anime".
This claim is, to be fair, a bit flawed, as one is a script writer and the other is a producer, but when these two are put under comparison, many can see some similarities.
For the oneiromantic science fiction thriller "Inception", there is Psycho-Pass, a criminal-investigation science fiction thriller. For the infamous sequel of the Dark Knight Trilogy, "The Dark Knight", there is a prequel of a famous game with a similar taste of ending called Fate/Zero.
And, before and after the release of the movie, Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise is compared to the infamous ... sci-fi thriller that shook the world this November, Interstellar.

Before I begin the review, I'd like to mention that Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise, henceforth to be called Rakuen Tsuihou in this review, is one of the first attempts, and most likely the best attempt at creating a full 3D motion animation picture done in Japan animation exclusively.
Also, *THIS REVIEW IS ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT ANY SPOILERS TO THE CONTENT*. Any information given beyond the explanation shown at myanimelist.net's description page is unintended.
Then, without further adieu, let us start the review.

Story: 7

Putting aside the fame of the script writer or the amazing animation, the story itself is actually not a grandiose one. With the description of Rakuen Tsuihou at myanimelist.net at December 16th, 2014, the date this review was written, being "Gen Urobuchi's original anime movie", there is not much I can reveal, except the fact that there are two main characters, one female and one male, from different uprising and different beliefs.
Gen Urobuchi has been gaining notoriety from the anime subculture fans known as otakus through his fluid style of writing, creative world settings, lack of fanservice and shocking plot twists. His works in Fate/Zero, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica and its sequel movie Rebellion story and Psycho-Pass has been praised by many of the members of the community.
However, for better for worse, this movie lacks any of his key styles of writing except fluid pace and creative world setting, which is understandable and even admirable, considering that the movie is only an hour and 43 minutes long. The pace was quite packed, as to not make the viewers' attention fly away, but not too packed as to confuse the viewers. The setting of the world was quite well-made that it could have easily been remade into several more movies or a whole tv animation of 2 cour or more.
Still, that is no excuse for receiving no praise from the story segment of this anime. There was, in exchange for moderate pacing, no plot twists that made people go on their feet, nor was there absence of fanservice that drew people more to the story than the characters.
At best, this story deserves neither a praise nor a criticism. It was an enjoyable plot for a 100-minute-long movie, and for that I gave it a flat seven.

The problem is that this was made by Gen Urobuchi.

For a movie for which the only description is "Gen Urobuchi's original anime movie", it does not deliver Urobuchi's style. Because of this, there is bound to be a severe underrated reviews that should follow, and Urobuchi almost deserves reviews more critical than my own, which is why it is stated at the beginning of the story segment of this review that I will put aside the fame of the script writer of this anime. If one does not linger on the fact that this is a film made by Urobuchi, the anime should be a pleasant experience.

And above all, there is another reason that this anime should be pleasurable.

Art: 10

3D animation has been done in Japanese animation several times before, and some has been praised for its deliverance while others failed miserably and were criticized severely. However, there has been almost no case of a full-3D animation that has received a praise.

Rakuen Tsuihou is undoubtedly the best attempt at full-3D animation in any reported case in Japanese animation.

The animation was done by graphinica with no works in the past worthy of mention except maybe Hellsing Ultimate, which was not a personal animation project. Despite the lack of worthy mentions, however, graphinica delivered a spectacular performance of full-3D animation. Although this may not be as fluent yet as some of the earlier works done in Disney's Pixar motion films such as "Frozen", this anime's 3D-rendered model of a character is closer to the general form that is shown on Japanimation, or the so-called moe animation, than the characters in Disney animation films.
The detail of the animation of superb. From the little detail of the facial expression to the movement of the hair and the edge of the characters, everything was very similar to the orthodox movement and animation of the general Japanimation.
Then there is the battle scene, which was genuinely awesome. The movements of the robots or "mecha" as called in the anime community were not at all awkward unlike many of the other 3D animation of mecha shown.
In a word, this is a "revolution" for 3D animation. This is most likely not a first attempt at animating everything on the screen with 3D modelling program, but it definitely is a splendid attempt at it. It is not an overstatement in saying that this anime deserves praise simply over animation.

Sound: 7

The OST was (not the ending theme), without hiding the truth, horrible.

First of all, it did not do a good job of supporting the scene presented on the screen. Moreover, it was almost a pain to hear some of the battle themes in the anime. The repeated sounds and basic tone of the music was too basic that it felt like listening to an anime theme song of early 90's.
For that, I give OST portion of the sound sphere a low 2.

However, the other two portions almost forgave the OST's misses.

First of all, the voice acting was splendid. Kugimiya Rie's performance deserved praise over praise as she voiced from teenager to grown woman to a child, with mood changes clearly shown in each tone of the voice. Miki Shinichiro's voice acting was just as splendid as he was able to clearly voice the feelings and tone of the character presented to the viewers. Kamiya Hiroshi's voicing of the robot was splendid as well.
For this I give voice acting a perfect ten.
And as for the ending theme song sung by ELISA, it was quite literally a musical in my ears. I felt myself melting over the beautiful melodies of the music. I could feel her music in my bones.
And, for this, I give voice acting a 9, with average of 7 for the score of sound segment.

Character: 9

For a film with only 100-minutes, the characterizations and developments are actually pretty well done.
For the clearly-fanservice-heavy character, Angela Balzac, there is a "respect" given for her. She is not our everyday tsundere big-boobed annoying teenager that gives headache to the male lead. Her actions and her growth are perceived actually rather well throughout the film. Her characterization and her back story, as well as her development were all present without taking up too much screen time, which I cannot complain for. The same is done for Zarik Kajiwara, who is not just an overpowered know-it-all main character that today's anime world adores and tends to follow upon, but a man with considerable reasons behind all his actions and with much characterization and development without, again, taking much too much screen time. Frontier Setter, as well, is quite a nice character that showed favorable character despite being on air for the least time among the three characters.
An argument could be made that Frontier Setter's development and characterization are rather speedy and not full, and this film being a 100-minute-long should not be an excuse for that, but it actually is a valid excuse. If this were a tva with 1 cour or less it would not be an excuse, but when it's a film where people choose to go watch it or not, it is valid an excuse. To top it off, the argument that Frontier Setter's development is rather slim and too hasty is not false but an invalid argument. Frontier Setter is not a main character, but a side character that appears halfway through the film. There is not expected to be any kind of development for said characters. However, despite being a side character, Frontier Setter shows quite a lovely characterization and a considerable development, making it almost seem like a main character despite being a side character.
For this, I give character 9/10.

Enjoyment: 8

To be honest, I was a little let down myself.
I have expected to see more of urobutcher (pun intended) in this anime, especially being that the female lead had a voluptuous body (refer to Tomoe Mami from Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica and Funahara Yuki from Psycho-Pass...) and the premise and the preview to the movie showing a lot of promises towards the stellar version of Psycho-Pass.
That is not to say that this was not a pleasurable experience.
The animation quite literally made me go on my feet, with art and facial expressions of the characters being beyond superb, and the ending theme song pleasing my ears. It was a pleasurable 100 minutes. I would have loved it more if there was a dark theme to this or some kind of plot twist, but I perhaps should not have had my hopes up, since I would end up underrating this show.
For that, I gave 8/10 for enjoyment.

Overall: 8

Granted, it was a letdown for a work done by Urobuchi, but it is a film pleasing to watch. I highly recommend watching this film.

Then, happy anime-ing.

[Spoiler Warning]

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 for the job 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 character 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 get rid of her mecha instead of Ballsack 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 Frontier Setter 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 muaic, 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 Ballsack 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 characters 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 in case 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 the film best performances. 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 portraying a robot who gained emotions.

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 with dialogue, and sound effects. In English, some wording are changed to make the story appears less idiotic than it already is, but also end changing the meaning of 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 in the English dub. 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.

This is not a review because I don't want to spend any time doing research on this "anime" movie, I just want to share with you why this movie is bad on so many levels after my second viewing, just to make the 2 hours I wasted on this thing worth something.

The first time I heard about this movie in 2012 I thought this is nothing but Toei wants to monetize on Urobuchi's fame after he wrote the massive hit Madoka, it's okay, this happens from time to time, as long as he got a competent team to help him refine the script as he ... is not a good screenwriter but a novel author first. Two years later I still want to see this movie just to follow Urobuchi's new career in anime and see if they can make 3D anything more than bearable. Turns out you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Let's start with the worst aspect of the movie: Writing. Urobuchi is not a competent screenwriter. He may had written some good novels in the past but that does not mean he can adopt to a different type of writing. The massive hit Madoka made him famous but that's because he had a team of talents from Shaft to help him write the screenplay that is suitable for the TV anime format. And this time who can guide him to write a screenplay for a movie? No one. Director Seiji Mizushima is not someone who can ordinate with Urobuchi, who is self-center and just wants to put long boring exposition, stupid plot twist and pretentious reference in his story. You can't give this man too much freedom.

I don't care if there is any tragedy or people got killed. What I really care is that you don't spend almost two-third of the screen time on characters just talking to each other and only use dialog to help world-building and character development. I would have been okay with the obviously over-sexiualized character design of all the female characters if they actually have "character". Even the heroine is just another typical damsel in distress tsundere who always need help from our hero who is as genetic as possible but this time he plays guitar. If you want good character interaction or interesting world-building, you wouldn't find any because almost everything is presented in dialog. After they destroy a nest of huge bugs, they stop and stand still to talk for 5 minutes, when they are in a transport getting to where the plot need them to, the movie spends 10 minutes on characters talking, after the hero saved the tsundere from genetic as hell street scumbags, they spend another 10 minutes talking. No, this time even better, when they reach the next plot point, we actually get 10 minutes of screen time devoted to the tsundere running up several staircase to get to the top of the building just to install a camera while having a conversation about nothing with the hero. I don't know, I found that scene so stupid that I walked out of the theatre.

I could go on about the horrible writing, but right now I feel tired just to think about the movie. If you are one of those youtubers that make long reviews you will have quite a material on your hand. Let's talk about the visual.

There is still a lot to improve in 3D. Everyone looks and moves like a puppet, combined with the horrible writing and weak characters you are just not going to pay attention to what the screen is happening, but I guess this is why them design their female character in this way? The action scene is fast-paced but other than looking nice there is little going on beneath the surface. There is only a few hard-drawn animation littered in everywhere but only make the 3D looks even worst in comparison, but for this "anime" movie I feel happy just to see they are not extincted and still superior than CG.

Do not expect too much from the voice acting, the characters themselves are generic as hell so the voice actors do not have much to work with from the start.

This is not even a good action flick that the trailer wants you to believe in the first place. It's just Urobuchi at his worst.

Disclaimer: I don't watch many anime movies. Therefore, I have to compare this with other things.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I didn't like this movie too much. There are definitely positives, though. Everything in the world has positives and negatives.

First, the positives. The art was fantastic. Seriously. The environments were beautiful, colorful, and chock-full of atmosphere. The space station designs were amazing, the virtual space where the main character reports to her superiors are appropriately awe-inspiring.

The soundtrack and voice acting were great as well. The actors played their parts to the tee, giving their characters life they never would have had ... otherwise. The song during the credit sequence was beautiful, and the action sequences were accompanied by appropriate pump-up music.

Now on to the bad: The story and characters. And this is where I felt the movie was severely flawed.

The story was alright, if a bit predictable. Why was it predictable? Well...you can tell what sort of anime this from the beginning. It was obviously a sort of psychological, grey morality sort of anime, and that means it will have a couple of twists which I could guess ahead of time.

The way the story was conveyed is the biggest problem I had with the movie. The opening was extremely confusing, thrusting you into the world and throwing you technical terms and imagery with VERY little explanation. The entire middle act of the movie is filled with nothing BUT explanation. Quite literally 70% of the scenes in the middle act starts with Angela asking Dingo a question, and he - I shit you not - either lectures her about humanity , gives her a damn history lesson, or explains to her what the f*ck he's doing right now and what their next step is.

This method of storytelling puts the audience to sleep by telling, not showing, as well as sacrificing character development. That's another massive problem with this movie. The characters barely develop. All we do the whole movie is learn about them - and that's not development. By the end of the movie, we have a good idea who the characters are, and how they react to moral quandaries and other things, but how do they actually develop? Angela learns to accept Earth - and that's it. Her other character traits don't change, and Dingo especially barely changes from his first appearance, due to him being Mr. Exposition. Another problem is I didn't feel any type of emotion towards any of these characters at all. There are anime that give me more attachment towards characters in a 20 minute episode. All in all, the characters are severely lacking.

The pacing is all over the place too. Near the start of the movie, there are three fight scenes. THREE fight scenes, two of which are extremely short, and only one of which is jaw-droppingly awesome (Seriously, it was amazing). Having three fight scenes in the first half of the movie gives the audience an expectation about the rest of the movie, but they ruin the pacing by filling the entire middle act with exposition. This reinforces the audience's losing interest, as they're expecting fights but not getting it until the climax of the movie.

Final verdict? Great art direction and sound, but they're dragged down by a confusing opening act and a very tedious middle act, as well as extremely weak characters.

--No spoilers here!---
Expelled from Paradise is the hit new movie everyone's been talking about, except that I had no idea that it even existed until yesterday. That being said, I went to go see it, and emerged pretty disappointed, especially since a video right before the movie had some dude promising me that this movie is at the apex of 3DCG animation and he thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

Story - 6/10
The story was really lacking in any emotional impact or direction. It starts off with a young girl living in a digital utopia being sent down to a post-cataclysmic ... desert Earth to chase down a hacker with the help of her assistant dude. Around halfway through, the story has an identity crisis and halfheartedly tries to delve into the ideas of humanity and what defines it. Sound familiar? If you're getting Ghost in the Shell vibes, you're not alone, the only difference here is that GitS deeply explores those ideas, while Expelled from Paradise introduces them but never goes anywhere. In addition, a lot of the story is quite predictable, and I was able to call quite a few events before they occurred.

Art - 4/10
Hoooooo boy. This is where I start to have some serious problems. The movie is produced entirely with 3D animation, a design choice that I deeply resented. I'm not one of those luddites who believes that 3DCG is terrible and ruins shows, but there's a clear oversaturation of it here. As a result, characters, which are hand-drawn in pretty much every other anime, suffer in appearance. Angela Balzac, the main character, looks straight out of an MMD video or an episode of RWBY, and her animations appear slow and choppy. She's also inconsistent with the other characters; Zarik, her assistant, looks like he belongs in Cowboy Bebop or some 90's anime. Fight scenes were incredibly fast paced and disorienting to the point that I had no idea what was going on sometimes, almost like they didn't want to animate the fight scenes in too much detail. Finally, the animators barely bothered with the mouths, they barely move and certainly don't come close to syncing with the audio or even resembling talking.

Sound - 7/10
The soundtrack to this movie is mostly synthy electronica stuff. Nothing stood out, but there was nothing wrong with it either, so that's that.

Characters - 5/10
Angela is a spoiled fighter from the digital world who must go down to Earth to complete her mission. Zarik is her assistant, a tough but smart guy who's good with computers. There's also a robot that has gained sentience and wants to go to space. These may sound like incredibly vague descriptions, but they're pretty much the limits of the characters. There's little to no character development in any way, and any attempt comes out as forced. Also, Angela is an incredibly annoying character sometimes.

Enjoyment - 6/10
While it didn't feel like an absolute drag to get through, I didn't find myself getting very excited or deeply attached to any of the moments or characters. It all just sort of blends together. Perhaps that's because the second third of the movie is riddled with dialogue and a lot of it isn't relevant to the story or isn't wrapped up or fully explained by the end.

In the end, it wasn't a terrible movie, but you could do much better. If you're a fan of what defines humanity and existentialism in a high-tech setting, you'd be far better off watching Ghost in the Shell. If you're in it for the mechas, hit up some Macross. Where it stands, Expelled From Paradise is an aesthetically unappealing hodgepodge of genres that never really reached out to me.

So Nolan's Interstellar was a good movie if you're into characters who speak dialogue meant to convey plot points and thought-provoking ideas rather than talk like actual human beings. It was a little overlong with a plot eerily similar to Gunbuster meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, terrible implementation of Hans Zimmer music, and Anne Hathaway's distressed female role being a little too obvious of a counterpoint to McConaughey's fatherly one. But the mixture of intense space sequences, Oscar-bait family drama, and really engaging things to say about humanity's future was well worth the IMAX price of fifteen dollars.

As such, I can probably be excused for ... being a little aggravated that I paid the same price to see a movie that tried to mimic Nolan's success, only to get a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas and cliches with lesser visuals and even lesser characters. I mean sure I got a free poster out of it, but considering I think that sort of stuff is tackier than a disco ball in a board room, let's just say it's never going to marry a wall anytime soon. It did have the advantage of being shorter than Interstellar, but that's a small blip compared to its other numerous problems.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I got to seeing Expelled From Paradise a little while ago and it wasn't very good. Which is a shame because this is the first thing Gen Urobuchi has worked on anime-wise that he had full control of script-wise, and not just something he wrote the scenario for and handed to some lesser studio because they wanted a piece of that "butcher pie". I'm not sure what he was thinking during the writing process, but let's just say if you saw the promo art, trust me when I say that the problems run deeper than the awkward CG and the lead being a skimpily dressed female officer voiced by Rie Kugimiya.

Not that those problems help. The CG is a step-up from some of the TV stuff we've been getting recently, but it's still awkward to watch, especially with its "lower than it should be" fps rate. And Angela, our main female character, ends up little more than a tough-as-nails female who experiences weakness when out of her environment and has to be taught by her male partner, Zarik, regarding how his life is different from the one she's used to. Yeah, that doesn't sound similar to Kugimiya's other roles, does it? These flaws pay off a bit during the final climax when Angela has to take on a bunch of her own fellow officers - even if the action can be a little too busy at times - but the buildup to get there isn't exactly a smooth ride.

The plot of the movie is basically a mix between virtual reality sci-fi and buddy road trip with the crux of the film centering on the relationship between the two main characters acting about as chummy as an actual human and a female cyber personality out of her element can be. Both of them are assigned to deal with a potential virtual threat by Angela's higher-ups and we basically follow them for the majority of the movie with most of the conflict being internal rather than external. Because Angela is used to having machines do everything for her, she's not used to getting sick, needing sleep, and other such things we humans can do because of the hardships we were unlucky enough to experience. Thus, the majority of the movie is her dealing with such things whilst the characters talk about their differences and exploring the benefits/costs of both worlds whilst bonding in the process.

Which would be fine if the "tell don't show" mode this movie runs on wasn't so awfully handled. Not only does the show utilize talking heads rather than actually showing us said worlds and what they can accomplish, but the dialogue is duller than a college class introduction. The ideas it brings up regarding reality versus the virtual world are about as complex as the cliffnotes version of Tron. Everything ultimately boils down to Angela realizing the virtual world she was used to isn't for her. The tipping point where she makes her decision due to the fact that she sympathizes with the very robot she was supposed to destroy is about as Hollywood cliche as they come. If you replaced the environmental messages with technological ones and downgraded the CG animation, you'd basically be watching a less pretty version of Avatar.

And despite the final climax being the highlight of the film, it isn't very good either beyond the spectacle. Without spoiling too much, the cause of said fight is due to one side wanting to give someone potentially dangerous a chance whilst the other side will have nothing of it. This isn't an inherently bad idea if said person/object in the middle of the conflict was Jonah from Monster, but let's just say he's nowhere near that quality. The potential danger he provides is no less complex than a DDoS attack except targeted towards a much bigger system - aka the virtual world - which probably would have been engaging if I knew more about said world beyond the shallow things discussed during the mountains of dialogue delivered in the real world segments. But as I stated before, that is not the case, and the final climax would have functioned better as an animation showcase rather than a vital part of a lacking movie.

I guess this movie is worth watching if you want to see Urobuchi enter the film business in something not related to any of his past projects and see some actually competent usage of CG. But outside of those attributes, if I wanted to see a Christopher Nolan movie, I'd watch the actual Christopher Nolan movie that's still in my local theatre. Interstellar blended in its multiple genres reasonably with unique ideas, powerful scenes, and flaws beyond what's written in "How To Write Cliches #101". Expelled From Paradise tried to do all that and failed, getting lost in a sea of tired shallow cliches, anime or otherwise. I don't know if Urobuchi watches Nolan's films or if the director is more to blame and hasn't seen 'em either (he did direct the Gundam 00 film and Conqueror of Shamballa after all), but either way they need to become friends with the dude and learn why he works. And Nolan would deliver his wisdom in long bouts of exposition that he prepared years in advance for such an occasion.

Plot: Rushes some bits in a fashion that would make anyone think "damn that was too easy". As soon as the plot twist passed, everything was easily predicted up to the end. Urobuchi throws in some philosophy regarding the nature and definition of what it is to be human, but is not particularly deep or view changing.

Art: Nicely detailed, although some parts were grossly oversimplified in the process of rendering it as cel-shaded. The characters were well rendered; imitating the look of traditional animation with CG is no easy feat, as Mekakucity actor's amazing flop demonstrates.

Animation: Very good CG, but the deliberate use of ... 6fps for the main animation was a poor decision in my opinion. While they were able to imitate the feel of animation, throwing away the strongest point of CG animation seemed to be a huge waste, especially in fast paced action scenes where it would've been amazing. Character animation was mediocre; their movements lacked fluidity and felt more like the movement of jerky puppets.

Soundtrack: Full of energy and carefully timed to match the scene. However, some parts gave the vibe of "trying too hard" and grated. The main theme was nice, but other than the action scenes, nothing really stood out as great.

Characters: Typical character design, not outstanding. The two main protagonists receive the most attention, but remain uninspired. Angela is the typical rash, bratty brat (voiced by the one and only Kugimiya), who undergoes some form of character development towards the end. Dingo on the other hand is the wise and witty freelancer who does as he pleases. What works well is their interaction, which seems natural and unforced, testament to Urobuchi's writing skills. The outfit designs themselves are unimpressive. Angela's quintessential "cyber citizen" outfit was not only ridiculous and unnecessary, it was absolutely stupid. What sort of organisation equips their agents with a swimsuit with glowsticks when they're sent to a barren desert-earth to search for a rogue hacker? As for Dingo, I wouldn't be surprised if they had pulled his outfit straight out of an old cowboy film, and replaced his hat.

Now here´s the deal.. Would you rather stick a 5 meter rod up your ass in front of a great deal of people or having to sit trough Expelled from paradiso? - I guess thats pretty obvious depending on your experience and knowledge about anime.

Theres a factor that every now and then anime seem to step on and that is the pretentious factor, its a word used by many and understood by.. well.. few.
The first thing that comes to mind after saying something is "pretentious" is the name "Gen Urobochi" HA! you know that guy that did Fate/zero, Psycho Pass or even took part on ... Phantom.. Well to not mention the "self aclaimed" deconstruction that is madoka wich is the best of the mahou shoujo deconstruction after Tutu, Utena, Yunna. Well it isnt a coincidence that every title (urobochi titles) I mentioned are very negatively criticized for being pretentious and well I agree with it for most part.
Having read so many reviews about this pile of utter garvish giving it 8/10 and 7/10 I had to come here and tell you that this show is utter garvish and it trully shows Gen´s true collors like he never showed before.

At first we have a scene in the beach (dont ask me why, fanservice?) we can see that the MC is a female loli, Oh yeah we can also see the shitty animation but Ill get to that in a second, Then she´s talking to a character that is featured on the cover, but do not worry since its the only scene you´ll get to see him, it then jumps to this sci fy vibe and then she starts blabbing some technical stuff that even the producers probably dont understand and your expecting me to take this seriously.. It shows us something very similar to pycho pass, (rippof) and then it jumps into some kind of action scene, and it ends. Well from that the show is allready telling you that you´re in for a treat and a not a little one. The show later on talks about concepts such has humanity and then jumps into acceptance and then something related to robots ahhh its so confusing. It mixes all these concepts and idealisms that altogether dont make any freaking sense.. There was a scene wich served has one of the highlights where she is talking to some "superior forces" composed by some kind of gods? trying to look important when they dont even have any sort of opinion based on their history they just know how to say "kill the robot because he is bad for some reason" and that people is what you call nihilism, (a belief in the pointless of existance. the absence of truth. the absence of reason. ) its a cheap trick constantly used by urobutcher in his works and it looks like it sold 70.000 copies.. thats right people, Redline sold about 2.000 and this piece of crap CGI sold 70 fucking thousand.. well .. I am speechless.. well later on the show even tries to characterizate the characters by giving a banjo to Dingo, and 2 min emotional scene with balzak, the robot in the other hand managed to be more appealing than those shmucks.. good lord.

Even for CGI I do admit that some of the fights were actually decent and enjoyable but it lacked reason and atmosphere for that matter, everything felt plastic.. it felt like watching Takena´s works, hell Takena has more atmosphere than this.. World Builiding is null and the rest fell flat has a surfing board. The soundtrack was so generic and uninteresting it hurt (It got to the point Neyko one of my dear friends put Whitney Houston song on the final scene, yes you heard me) I was never so utterly disguted after watching an anime ,probably not true, but it was a horrible experience..

The character interactions are very dumb and pretentious has Dingo and Balzak spend about 10 min talking about the living world and the scify world has in you should enjoy your life to the fullest with such a flaired uninteresting dialogue that in the end the scene could have been done in 1.30 min. Thus making the character interactions pathetic and underwhelming. Well to conclude everything do NOT watch this show in any circunstances not even for comedic effect has its horrible and almost insulting. You think you can fool me Paradise? NO YOU CANT.

FINAL SCORE

STORY(1) Setting: 0/3 Premise:0/3 Plot:1/4
CHARA(1) Develop: 0/4 Personality: 1/4 (robot saves the day)
Unique:0/2
SOUND(2) Sound place: 1/3 Unique: 0/2
Atmosphe: 1/5
ART(3) animation: 2/4 Style: 1/2 Design: 0/2 back:0/2
ENJOY(1) pace: 1/5 enj: 0/5

FUCK YOU DEMOD FOR RECOMMENDING THIS SHIT.

I don't remember last time I had this much difficulty picking between 10 and 9. On one hand, based Urobuchi does SF the way I like it and writes a compelling story with great characters. On the other hand, lackluster direction decides we need unnecessary fanservice for some reason, and what's worse, the idea also permeates the very character design itself when it comes to our protagonist. Going with iconic Kugumiya Rie for her stroke me as a strange choice, and I'm still not sure how much it fits, but I guess it fits well enough. It's hard to be objective there knowing all her ... previous roles and having it color the casting choice.

That's half the issue, the other half is jarring use of CG for character animation, which has inconsistent quality, so even though it sometimes looks actually really good, more often than not it looks... strange, a bit stiff and unnatural. Even the framing of character animation shots seemed off at here and there. Having character animation seem almost amateur at places really really hurts immersion, more specifically it makes them seem less human when they don't move like humans. I'm not hating on CG in general, it's just that it's not yet at the level of 2D animation when it comes to nuance of anime character expressions. It'll get there, but it's not there yet, not completely. Or maybe their budget just wasn't high enough? Maybe they thought allocating it to action scenes took priority? Well it did make for quite spectacular action scenes I must admit, and quite a lot of them.

It was very interesting seeing a whole original Urobuchi story told in a movie format, format much shorter than all of his previous works. It almost felt as slight disappointment for not exploring characters deeper and fleshing out the world some more, things I started associating with his writing only due the format of his writing up to this point, but then I remembered it was standard length a movie.

It felt original, was awe inducing, thrilling, inspiring and thought provoking. Can hardly ask for more story wise.

Gen Urobuchi, now in glorious 3D!..CGI, featuring... Toei? Doesn't sound too appealing, does it?

Back in March 2012 word was out that a new movie by Nitroplus, and almost consecutively Gen Urobuchi, was in the works, but few months ago it was actually revealed that this movie was in production ever since late 2009, that's 5 whole years in production, question is: was it worth it?

If you've come here expecting another Urobutcher hit you'll be most displeased, certainly the message present in most of his works is present here as well, it just lacks the execution to make it significant, it's but a thought in the ... sea of words this movie sports.

The movie doesn't hold back as it skips right to the best part – the beach scene. As if our kinpatsu heroine's shameful display of skin wasn't distraction enough some guy comes along and starts talking about personalities, memories, density and private maps? What seems like a bad pickup line straight out of a cheap hentai ends interrupted as everything freezes and the people themselves start glitching up, a black wall introduces itself as "Frontier Setter" and soon after our heroine strips all her clothes to chase after the thing in cyberspace, where she ends up cloning herself multiple times for an even bigger oppai per pixel amount, only to ultimately fail though. We end up learning her name – Angela – and shortly after she's assigned to track Frontier Setter down along with another agent called Dingo. It's location? Earth.

Seems like a lot to digest in just 6 minutes but worry not, the movie at least does a decent job of filling in the gaps as it goes.

Expelled From Paradise is set in the not-so-near future where Earth has been reduced to a wasteland and most of the people who inhabited it moved to space and were turned into raw data in an infrastructure called DEVA.
An utopia like many others, you work hard and help society? You get extra data, you don't do anything? Your data is frozen and given to other people, about the same as being killed but it sounds nicer so it's ok.
The movie's theme is nothing new if you've seen any other of Urobuchi's works – characters live in an utopia, find a bit more about it, don't really like it and end up going against it, but why would you change something that isn't broken? Ultimately that's the story behind most of Urobuchi's works, a story about characters who try to change their perfect world. Expect in Expelled From Paradise it's in a very raw and somewhat dumbed down state, world building is made more through the characters than through the world itself and most of it's message could easily be summarized in a single line, it barely attempts to make the viewer think about the topic, quickly shoving it to the side so it can move forward.
Nothing unreasonable happens either, there's no big plot twist or shocking event, leaving the main conflict in the movie to be generated by a "what did you expect to happen?" moment, the story just flows very naturally and without big surprises.

The characters are just as straightforward, Angela is actually an adult that ends up as a 16 year old because she wanted her new body to made faster so she could reach Frontier Setter first. And yes, I've seen that hentai before too.
Throughout the movie I was left wondering, multiple times, just how much of her body revert to it's 16 year old state though. Angela is portrayed as a pretty big DEVA agent but her actions, at least outside of combat, do suggest otherwise, one could argue that's thanks to having DEVA take care of her her whole life but in the end the problem is that, while her character does develop, it feels like the end result should have been the starting one.
She's also voiced by Rie Kugimiya, in other words, a tsundere.
Dingo is an easy-going guy who helps Angela in her mission and serves as a gateway for most of her development, from teaching her the dangers of the common cold to opening her eyes to what implies living in DEVA. He's basically the opposite of Angela and, throughout the movie, he ends up dragging her to his side.

If nothing else, Expelled From Paradise at least serves as an indicator of how far 3DCGI has come, an ironic one at that too as Angela got the short end of the stick as far as character designs go, you'd expect Japan to get their high school females right given how they're the backbone of the industry but Angela is one of the worst designs in the film, her hair sticks out so much and feels so out of place it never went through the funny stage, it was sad from the get-go.
One has to wonder why they'd replace her ponytail with a twintail when they turned her into a teenager, that was easily the worst decision anyone ever made in regards to this movie, not even on a personal level, it's twice the trouble and the people who handled her hair could barely handle the ponytail.
Aside from Angela everyone else looks alright, funnily enough her fellow female soldiers look amazing, these being in their adult state and with shorter hair however, who would have thought the day would come where you'd prefer a heroine with short hair instead of long? I sure didn't.

While decently looking for the most part the animation stills leaves a lot to be desired, more often than not, it feels really laggy, imagine playing a video game at half the FPS, that's basically the problem here, there are some parts in which it truly works and looks good but those are few and far inbetween.
Can't help but wonder if it has something to do with the fact that this movie has been in the making for 5 years but I don't know much about the process so no comments there, still, it's a mixed bag, some look great some look pretty bad, coincidently enough the better looking shots this movie has to offer are found more towards the end.

The fighting sequences are easily the highest point of the film but even those have their ups and downs, the mecha designs look stunning and the animation in these sequences is really good, the only problem with them would be the fact that they are simply too fast paced, it's hard to know what is going on when the camera switches angles every 3 seconds, it sure does a good job in showing just how capable 3D animation is, going from behind a mecha to the front without any quality drop, but in the end it's really hard to appreciate it most of the time.

On the other hand, the sound in Expelled From Paradise certainly doesn't require much effort to appreciate, with very experienced people behind both the sounds effect and direction, along with NARASAKI behind most of the OST, it's not too shabby at all with a wide array of, mostly, techno tracks.
The theme song "Eonian" by ELISA certainly does the rest of the audiography justice, topping the movie off very well.

Overall, an average of 7.5 – closer to 7 – is what Expelled From Paradise ends up with, not a bad movie at all but certainly not a movie for those with high expectations or for those who really want something meaningful to come out of their time investment.
Furthermore, while I personally didn't find the movie to be boring at all it does have lots and lots of talking so be aware, same could be said for the 3DCGI I suppose, it's not as bad as it sounds.


Paradise Expulsion: Was it worth it?
2014 has been a rather weak year for independent anime films and, unfortunately, it doesn't look like Expelled From Paradise is here to help.
Perhaps Urobuchi still lacked some experience back in 2009, perhaps the point wasn't to make something extremely meaningful that'd leave fans wondering just what it really meant years later, it's undeniable that it ended up being rather unimpressive though.
I'd argue it didn't even need Urobuchi to work on it at all and it certainly didn't need 5 years for the animation, but given how well received it has been in Japan I'd say it was worth the time investment on the producers' end.
If you hate Urobuchi with a passion then this will certainly be most enjoyable to discuss later down the line, for everyone else, it's a safe way to spend 100 minutes.

Plot:
Expelled From Paradise follows Angela, a girl in her twenties, who was raised in a Matrix-like computer system on a space station orbiting a post-apocalyptic Earth. But after a hacker from the devastated planet below breaks into the system, she is tasked with finding and stopping the hacker in the real world. To do this, she is transferred into a clone body, given a mech, and told to meet up with Dingo, an agent living on Earth.
Thus begins her fish-out-of-water tale as she not only finds herself in a strange land she knows nothing about but also has to deal with a life trapped in ... a body that, unlike her digital one, requires food and rest. Together, Dingo and Angela travel across the frontier-like ruined Earth, trying to solve the mystery of the hacker’s identity and his true goals.

_Trigun_ meets _Ghost in the Shell_ when a transhumanist space society dispatches a special agent to the post-apocalyptic desert Earth to locate and deal with a hacker that keeps annoying their citizens with a broadcast about space colonization. The agent discovers life as a computer upload leaves her unequipped to deal with the drawbacks of flesh but eventually she and her partner find the hacker and discover his true mission. The first plot twist I did not expect, and while the second was immediately predictable from the first, it was still fun to watch play out.

Much better than expected; the fanservice is more limited than ... feared, the end sequence with the mecha battle is one of the funner mecha battles I've seen in a while, and it's hard to not like a story in which the 'evil AI' wins and the film's critique of a transhumanist society actually makes sense and is valid (rather than being one of the endlessly predictable tropes along the lines of "Caveman Science Fiction" http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/ ). And it's not at all a downer like one might expect from a project involving Urobuchi Gen, rather it's a fairly uplifting classic SF space tale which reminded be a bit of _Wings of Honneamise_ and more recently, _Gravity_ or _The Martian_.

It also ties into the Fermi Paradox in an interesting way. Deva government's actions makes sense in terms of control: limiting resources limits the number of free agents and potential random events, as does letting Earth continue to disintegrate. This resource scarcity, controlled by an apparently absolutely totalitarian government, produces predictably pernicious social dynamics and destroys Deva's claims to superiority in any way but brute force.
Resource scarcity also predictably explains why Frontier Setter is an existential threat and they cannot simply peacefully negotiate a deal like 'starship supplies in exchange for a full security audit of the Deva computer security' - since, as an autonomous AI which can indefinitely reproduce itself, it will spread exponentially through the galaxy within a million years, gaining resources beyond calculation, not to mention possible encounters with aliens (which might lead to backlash onto the origin, Earth). Logically, to maintain its security, Deva must either destroy Frontier Setter and also ensure that no such escape is possible ever again, or embark on its own exploration/colonization program. From this perspective, _Expelled from Paradise_ is offering a refutation of possibly the most common 'explanation' for the Fermi paradox: many alien civilizations exist, but all of them are, independently, too lazy/oppressive/uninterested in space colonization. Unfortunately, this explanation is totally innumerate and implausible: it requires only one expansionist entity, not necessarily even a plurality of a particular civilization (possibly even a single idiosyncratic AI, depending on how intelligent it is and how many resources it can accumulate), to kick off colonization, and if it's implausible that more than a single-digit number of civilizations would decide this, it's even more implausible that this failure to colonize would be successfully maintained over possibly millions of years (no biological or computer system has ever had that kind of track record!).
The ending is a bit unconvincing, since Dingo's political/resource concern is addressed by colonization (they can create many Devas in neighboring solar systems) and there's no particular reason for Angela to choose to be trapped on one planet rather than have the opportunity to explore many (especially since she would maintain her high-tech upload lifestyle in between solar systems).

Flawed elements here would include the CGI (good overall but what we see the most of is hair, particularly Angela's, which looks atrocious; it doesn't have to be _Frozen_ or _Brave_ levels of hair rendering but it should at least not look 'chunky' and much worse than the rest of the animation), an unfortunate reliance on some anime tropes (Angela's appearance/character-design is standard somewhat-loli twin-tail tsundere/princess fanservice & archetype, which while not nearly as excessive as I feared from the promotional materials, still unfortunately will limit its appeal outside the usual anime demographics, and does a disservice to the character and also to Kugumiya Rie, who presumably is talented enough to voice a less common archetype), and a general absence of world-building (while often gorgeous, surely the *whole planet* can't be empty desert, deserted city ruins, and one town?). The music is decent but unlike some of the other reviewers, the core song didn't work for me.

First of all, This is my first review on anime section so please bear with me.


I don't know why a lot says it sucks. Maybe because it's there preferences . I would not argue with that. This review will not be review I think its between a review and an after realization about this movie. However there are strong points that this movie hits me so let's dig to the main topic

STORY - 9
"What is Freedom?". can we say that in this generation we have freedom. In the era were technology advances so fast. Are the machine are the slaves or us? Rakuen ... Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise shows me both dark and good side of relationship between humans and machines. Second. "What is Friendship" Well i know it's one of the basic formula in almost every anime. But this shows me a much clearer concept of setting side differences either you're a digital lifeform,human or even an A.I can make a good relationship. This probably the things i really like about Urobuchi Gen, his powerful mind to create such persona. Stories that you need to fully understand to taste its glory. I sick tired of watching anime where everything was feed to the viewer.

ART - 9
Oh, do i need to specify why. *chuckles This was in production for quite a time so it lives the expectation. Thinking much of how many hours it takes just to render one thing will make you wonder how much they spend on making this movie.

SOUND - 8
OST - the ost was quite right on track in action. The beat in action scene was just like adding a hot sauce in my burger.

ENJOYMENT - 10 OVERALL - 9
I'm a big fan of both mecha and cyberpunk but nowadays its rare for me find mecha theme which suit my standards. However Rakuen Tsuihou manage to fulfill that. I remember the last time i get goosebumps on mecha was about watching Gundam OO when Lockon Dies. And i'm feeling really nostalgic about seeing Dingo. Over all i'm quite satisfied it's a good movie to see rather than some ecchi stuff on my list. I


If your fan of mecha and appreciates little details why not watch this. You probably learn some new point of views in life

Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise (Final Thoughts):
It's a decent movie! Before I begin my FIRST REVIEW EVER, let me explain my reasons for watching this movie.
I wanted to watch this movie for 3 reasons. One is that the screenplay was written by Urobuchi (or Urobutcher if you prefer). Two is that I heard that the main female character is voiced by Rie Kugimiya (one of my favorite voice actors!). If you don't know her, she voiced a crap-ton of tsunderes (Taiga from Toradora, Shana from Shakugan no Shana, Louise from Zero no Tsukaima, etc etc). The third and final reason why I wanted to watch ... this movie is through Animenz's piano cover of one of the soundtracks of this movie (he's a great pianist, youtube him!).
So, without further ado, let's begin!
Pros:
-Great fight scenes!
-Great main male and female characters/voice actors (come on, how can you not love Rie Kugimiya?)
-Great soundtrack! (GO ELISA!)
Cons:
-Plot is pretty predictable
-Some of the dialogue gets pretty overwhelming, a lot of talking in this movie
-The message at the end is a little weak imo, you can interpret it however you like (I thought it was just alright, nothing too amazing)
Neutral:
The animation is just a toss-up, so it's really up to the viewers themselves to determine whether they like it or not. While I did notice that the animation was CGI for the most part, it didn't really bother me nor impress me.
Final Score: 7/10
If you like Sci-Fi, Mech, Action, and a tad bit of Psychological, you may enjoy this movie.

Also kind of random, but there is this one specific scene in this movie that made me INSTANTLY think of Summer Wars. I think you'll know which scene I'm talking about when you see it!

*MILD SPOILERS AHEAD*

For a little while, I`ve had this craving for more mech shows. Mecha is probably my favorite type of Sci-fi, and if done well, can lead to a stellar experience such as with Code Geass or the Macross Franchise. A mech anime isn`t so easy to truly and utterly screw up since even with clunky CGI, both this, and the two seasons of Aldnoah.Zero offer some cool mech fights that can really exite many viewers, which makes those anime so hard to truly F up in the enjoyment factor, even if certain stories like the one for both seasons of Aldnoah.Zero divulge into ... an utter mess. Funnily enough, the man behind parts of Aldnoah.Zero was also a part of this movie; Expelled From Paradise. Well, enough rambling. Is this movie worthy of paradise, does it deserve to be thrown into the junkyard, or is it just there to soak up some action and disposable right afterwards? Let`s find out, shall we?

STORY: 6/10

To put it this way, the questions brought up are interesting. What is freedom? Is freeing yourself from the limitations of your body worth struggling in a society dominated by predetermined factors and a status quo? Well, don`t delve into those questions for too long. The movie sure as hell dosen`t. There is one major moment around the 69 minute mark that is questionable and only really there to give some action to this mostly average road trip that only had 2 action scenes up to that point. Also, there is a post-credits scene that was so forced, I almost felt uncomfortable. A girl is sent to Earth to track down a hacker, and goes on a road trip with a partner in order to arrive and put a stop to all of this, and everything feels harmless and mundane, well, alien v mech scene and gang up scene aside. For the longest time, there`s little sense of urgency or even threat. However, even with minor plotholes near the end, it was a decent road trip movie with, surprisingly no real antagonist until the last third of the film. Also, the pacing is a bit weird in places.

CHARACTERS: 6/10

OK, let`s get this out of the way. Angela, the main protagonist is a bit inconsistent, and whiny. Not to mention, she`s a total ass at times. Her development is a bit rushed and inconsistent as well. She isn`t a very good character overall. Dingo, on the other hand, is a decent character. He`s sarcastic, semi-philosophical, and has a thing for rock music. He`s a pretty cool guy. Also, he`s voiced by Steve Blum. Frontier Setter is an OK robot who just wants to go to space, and take some other interested people with him. He`s built up as this dangerous hacker, but to see him so light-hearted and harmless, is pretty interesting. The REAL antagonists are pretty lame and one-dimensional, and they kinda come out of nowhere.

ART: 6/10

The CG anime esque art style can work. Heck, RWBY, for the most part, uses it to great effect, especially season 2 onwards. Here, it looks stiff and clunky. Plus, Angela`s hair looks very plastic. The facial and mouth expressions leave a lot to be desired as well. However, the mechs look good, and have good CGI. Some of the character models don`t bug me nearly as much as Angela`s, and the obvious fanservice bits don`t really help. The fights look pretty good, as to be expected from a mech anime, especially one with a film budget. The 2-D bits, while not always integrated amazingly, can still look good at times, as well as the CGI. Also, the futuristic and cyber looking stuff shown occasionally, looks pretty good as well.

SOUND: 6/10

The techno music that permeates most of the OST is pretty forgettable, and slightly obnoxious at points. The ending theme, while OK, tries to give off this vibe that would say that you`ve just experienced a beautiful, climactic, and utterly satisfying journey, and it doesen`t work given how this movie both is, and feels. That one song Dingo sings is pretty alright. Otherwise, not a very notable soundtrack. The DUB on the other hand, is kinda good. Yes, the actress for Angela is a bit annoying, but her character is annoying, so meh, but Steve Blum as Dingo, is pretty great. Then again, this IS Steve Blum we`re talking about. Johnny Yong Bosch as Frontier Setter, also gives a good performance. One thing that was odd was when the characters would sing. They tended to use Japanese lyrics instead of trying to translate them, so they didn`t even dub those parts, instead, leaving the original Japanese performances. Overall, not a groundbreaking dub, but good none the less.

ENJOYMENT: 5/10

Yeah, I gotta be honest. This movie wasn`t very entertaining. Sure, the 2 mech fights where cool, but, philosophical questions and Dino aside, the movie didn`t really engage me. That`ll likely turn some people off. It`s not a slow burn movie either. There aren`t enough interesting moments with some dullness sprinkled in for that. It`s just a bit too dull, even with an interesting premise such as this, I wasn`t as entertained as I should`ve been given something like this. However, the mech fights were alright, and I still enjoyed much of Dingo`s presence.

OVERALL: 5/10 RAW SCORE: 5.38/10

I understand that this movie is rather dull at points, and that it didn`t really deliver on such an interesting premise. However, the fights were decent, and Dingo is an enjoyable, not gonna lie. Also, philosophy is always gonna grab my attention in an anime if used even remotely competently, albeit the usage here was a bit lacking. If you have 100 minutes to kill, and are looking for some Sci-fi mixed with road trip, this might have a chance of doing the job, but only if you're running out of decent Sci-fi movies. With all that said, I bid you adieu.

One of the few animes recently from Japan that can still have a decent show with a good story now of days. It is a good movie with a good story and one of the better quality animations as compared to other sci fic story animations and 3D animations.

Just like many other reviews, it might contain spoilers and opinions about the movie after having watched it therefore this review is more suitable for people who had watched the movie or wanted to be spoilt. I would not talk too much about it's story summaries since it might had been said a lot of times ... by other people in other reviews, so I will just try to keep it simple. Also, I would not make comparison to Gen Urobuchi's other works and just review on the movie itself.

Generally the movie's idea and philosophy is about a robot AI becoming more human and humans becoming more robotic and more technologically dependant. It's also about alternate version world where people don't space travel and instead form a virtual world to live in it without their bodies, solving a lot of problems such as overpopulation and finite resources but depends heavily on their technology.

Art: 9
It is one of the few more successful 3D animations that would actually attract people with just the visuals. It is really nice to look at with advance and beautiful artstyle that seem more 2Dish just like watching a typical anime yet 3D but is not reality realistic looking, other similar animations show I can think of with similar features would be the animation karen senki, the walking dead game, rwby and maybe a bit similar to the movie appleseed ex machina, but be reminded that I am not a professional 3DCG animator so I am just comparing it through visual similarities. Also just like many other animes that are similar in animation yet different in story, it is best not to judge a show's story on how it is animated.

Sound, music: 8
Really good, quite exciting variety range of background music and the characters also get to sing too. The post credit song is also nice to listen too.

Characters: 8
The character designs are beautiful and cute too, there would be times where you would not take your eyes off of Angela. The other characters' design was simple yet have very distinctive features for them that you would definitely not forget or confuse with other characters in other animes.
The friendly robot AI Frontier Setter is one of my more favourite characters among the cast, it's cheerful, cute and friendly personality would make you wish that he was your friend.
Other characters such as Dingo is more mature, humble, smart and perspective while Angela is more prideful, whiny, bratty but hardworking, self restraint and also more mature as compared to typical tsun girls.
Aside that the characters did not have a well defined background story to develop for the viewers to know more about them, the characters themselves are actually quite developed that can give the viewers an understanding of what characters and personality they are.

P.S. Also, how is Dingo a poor mannered and tolerance guy? It's funny that Angela called him that way, that guy is actually quite friendly, helpful and tolerating towards that egoistic girl. One of the few typical female personality trend seen in animes, but not too much in this movie.

Story: 8
Nice anime and interesting story plot overall that left us with things to think about, it is generally not a boring show to watch and is quite casual at times and eventhough it's ending is not bad but I just hoped that it can be better.

Some story plot flaws and questions I thought about the movie after watching it, food for thought for people who had Watched the movie.
Such as couldn't frontier setter just take their DNA or something? I mean they already have cloning technology and also if he is an AI program why couldn't he copied himself then? That means that by doing so he can both stayed behind while also goes to space too. Also, can't he also asked for opinions from people on earth or people that have been archived? And even if a normal person wants to join the operation, how can he join it? Would it be very troublesome and dangerous too? If so it is not smart to ask the public to join if there is no proper way for the public to come anyway.
Also they keep saying that they have unlimited potential, yet in the end, the truth is that they are still limited by their memories and processing powers.

Enjoyment: 9
One of the few animes that have similar vibes to watching animes like cowboy bebop, Suisei no Gargantia or even sci fic movies like appleseed, wonderful days. I actually enjoyed watching the movie all the way, every talk they had is an idea, a development and insight to it's world and story. Not a single moment is wasted.

Overall: 9
It is still an exciting, interesting and pleasing movie to watch in overall with a great story afterthought that I would recommend to other people.

In an idealized version of The Matrix world- humanity lives in a state of blissful ignorance of the physical. Technology has advanced to such a point where the collective consciousness of humanity has been placed onto a space station orbiting the ruined Earth, after a destructive event renders most of it uninhabitable and desolate. Adults and children alike's DNA was examined and coded into a virtual world known as Deva- where they are immortal, suffer from no maladies, no war, no hunger- a true paradise with only their imagination restraining the infinite capabilities for the cyberized denizens.

This paradise is not alone, however. Humans still ... exist on the Earth- those left behind who did not have the ability or means to have their consciousness transported offworld. Being completely reliant on an in-universe version of the internet and computing abilities, Deva is then vulnerable to cyber attacks- which comes in the form of a strange request from one calling themselves the Frontier Setter- seeking humans to travel to the far reaches of the solar system in order to find a new home for humanity, leaving their digital paradise behind.

Security agent Angela Ballzac (yes, someone had the bright idea to name a character ballsack... how this passed and made it into the movie is beyond me) is tasked with discovering the identity of this hacker, and is sent to Earth in a newly cloned human body with her consciousness. She meets up with Dingo, a suave, roguish man who also works with the security agency and together they find out that the "threat" posed by Frontier Setter is not exactly what it was made out to be.

The story itself borrows heavily from the aforementioned Matrix movies, and with a healthy dose of Gen Urobuchi's flavor of existentialism- focusing on what really makes a human human in a world where AI can achieve sentience and a consciousness can be transformed into data. Like the Matrix, it also examines the question of whether humanity is really happy in an heavily regulated, artificial world of their construction, versus being in control of their own destiny in a world full of harsh realities, inequalities, and threats to continued existence. This idea is present throughout the story, and while there's not enough runtime to really flesh it out a lot aside from some comments and mentions, it does at least raise some interesting thoughts. Ultimately though, the plot really has no central antagonist and no one to really support or get into their struggle- it's almost purely an action fest with hints of a deeper thread that never thicken.

The characters themselves, Angela and Dingo are fairly interesting, if a bit underdeveloped. Dingo is your Han Solo type rogue character who plays by his own rules but always gets the job done, and Angela is a bit of a spoiled brat who has to learn how the other half lives. As a trained security agent, she has experience with all manner of technology and weapons- including the use of large mechs. Interestingly enough for how stripperific her outfit is, Angela isn't overly sexualized (this even lampshaded with one of Dingo's comments), nor is she sidelined for being a female MC- which was refreshing. She wasn't turned into waifu bait and set aside for the other characters to run over, but instead takes an active role in the action and plot. Angela and Dingo have decent chemistry as characters, but thankfully there's no terrible tacked on romance to ruin anything the viewer might imagine between them.

An an auditory note- Steve Blum is fantastic as Dingo, and Wendee Lee is at her best here as Angela- both veterans gave excellent performances. The animation itself is probably the best Toei has ever done, and maybe ever will do. It makes heavy use of 3D, but the framerate stays above that necessary 20fps for about 95% of the time, with just a handful of noticeable dips below. Not visually stunning as a film, but given Toei's track record with visual aesthetic... this ranks among their best!

In conclusion, Expelled From Paradise has a few big ideas in it that are borrowed from series like The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell, but doesn't capitalize on them in the same way- they're merely ideas tossed out in breaks in the action, which is Paradise's second biggest flaw aside from not having a real antagonist. As far as being a shallow action flick, one can certainly do worse, but then again, there are better out there.