Tenshi no Tamago (Angel's Egg)

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: 天使のたまご

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Information

Type: OVA

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Dec 22, 1985

Producers: Tokuma Shoten

Licensors: Anchor Bay Films

Studios: Studio Deen

Source: Original

Genres: Avant Garde, Drama, Fantasy

Duration: 1 hr. 11 min.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.71¹ (scored by 57,229 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1166²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1508

Members: 146,918

Favorites: 3,328

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AniDB

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Synopsis

The surrealist world of Tenshi no Tamago is desolate and devoid of the bustle of traditional everyday life. Instead, the world is filled with ominous phenomena, including floating orbs populated with statues of goddesses, gargantuan army tanks that seem to move unmanned, armies of fishermen who chase after the shadows of nonexistent fish, and caverns solely decorated with glass vessels of water.

In this run-down world, a young girl takes care of a large egg and scavenges for food and drink. She encounters a mysterious man with a cross over his shoulder, who soon becomes curious about who she is and what her egg contains. They decide to explore the lost and broken landscape together, questioning each other about the nature of faith, the purpose of the world, and the origins of their lives.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

When it was brought to the US, 45 minutes of live action footage was added in an attempt to release it as a post-apocalyptic thriller called In The Aftermath: Angels Never Sleep.

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Characters & Voice Actors

Girl

Main

Hyoudou, Mako
Japanese

Boy

Main

Nezu, Jinpachi
Japanese

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Staff

Suzuki, Toshio

Producer

Hasegawa, Hiroshi

Producer

Oshii, Mamoru

Director, Screenplay, Original Creator

Shiba, Shigeharu

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

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Ending Theme

"Prelude" by Yoshihiro Kanno

Reviews

Nov 27, 2023

Daubeny117

Recommended

This is one of my favorite movies of all time, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Tenshi No Tamago is almost a purely visual movie. It has very few dialogue, and the few that it has is abstract and philosophical rather than being there to move the story forward. Speaking of the story, there's barely any : the two main (and only) characters meet at the very begining, they wander for a while until one of them eventually does the only thing that has a significant impact on the story, and the movie ends.

What's at the heart of the movie are it's ... visuals. It looks unique, being one of the very few movies that really captures Yoshitaka Amano's style. While the design of the two characters are great, the backgrounds and the overall world are really at the forefront. Rather than creating a story, the movie develops an atmosphere through the different locations the characters go through. Everything is deserted, like the remains of a civilisation that disappeared, leaving it's gothic cities, churches and other creations without their meaning. With very few dialogue and a lot of what is shown left unexplained, the movie suggests a world that is bigger than what is shown and that we can't fully grasp, it lets your imagination interpret and expand it.

It also all feels very dream-like. It has a lot of abstracts things that happen and don't really make sense in the litteral way, but rather in a symbolic way. I feel like it's best to let the movie flow and watch things happen without necessarily trying to understand, because everything in it is covered in so many layer of stylization and abstraction that you can really find any meaning you want in it.
The animation, while minimalistic (there is a lot of stillness and it's all very slow) can sometimes be very intricate (the girl's hair for example, or the use of shadows), distorting perspective and light.
Even the music is weird and abstract, sometimes kind of atonal, it sounds like early 20th century european classical music with it's experimentality and complexity and it's instrumentation. It doesn't have a lot of themes, it's sometimes unclear what emotion it even expresses, creating mystery more than meaning.

Overall, I'd say the movie is a visual masterpiece. It's atmosphere is masterfully created and maintained throughout the movie. If you like dream-like experiences, abstract artsy movies and haunting empty gothic architecture, this is a movie for you. If you're looking for entertainement, this is not for you: it's very slow-paced and conetmplative, to the point of being potentially very boring. It's more of a movie that makes you feel a particular way, and you have to be receptive to it, but if you are it has the potential to really connect with you.

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Nov 2, 2022

CorrectorYui

Mixed Feelings

This movie is definitely not for everyone. It's slow, abstract in plot and theme, and nothing really happens. However, I did enjoy it as a late-night watch. The landscapes are like moving paintings with the ambient sound and soft music providing the post-apocalyptic setting with a very melancholic tone. There is a lot of Christian symbolism laden throughout. And, the lingering shots allow one to appreciate the drawings of each frame. However, this movie is definitely not without fault.

The pacing is abysmally slow with nothing really happening save for some action in the city with fish and statues. The dialogue is strange at times and ...

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Jun 14, 2023

undamoth

Not Recommended

Funny

This is going to be short. I'm gonna be unfront and tell y'all that this is probably the worst experience I had with any anime.

You can dump on shows like Mars of Destruction all you want but the very least I had fun making fun of it. There's bad, there's boring, there's atrocious, and there's Angel Egg. Yoshitaka Amano is a great artist given how I love the old school Final Fantasy artworks and seeing him work on this horrid mullet of a turd was painful. Apparently, the guy who made Ghost in the Shell movie worked on this as well. But why would ...

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Tenshi no Tamago

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Resources

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Characters & Voice Actors

Girl

Boy

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

Recent Featured Articles

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