Aragne, like Amrita, had compelling imagery, but the CGI was frequently rough, and some parts suffered from drunken camera work. The camera in Amrita is more restrained and cinematic in its exploration of the setting, and the animation is an improvement by using rotoscoped characters composited onto CGI backdrops. There's occasionally a mixture of CGI with the character movement, such as the eyes in a few scenes, but it's subtler. The frame rate is low, except for the chase sequence in the trailer, and the dialogue doesn't appear to be in sync with the characters' mouths much of the time. The film is far from perfect, but Amrita represents a decent bridge between the train wreck that was Aragne and whatever future project Sakamoto will work on. Yes, several horror anime films and series are better than Amrita, but Sakamoto appears to be the only true horror auteur in the industry.
Aside from smoothing out the incomprehension prevalent in Aragne and general visual tweaks, the most vital improvement is that the character designs and movements are far less robotic, lending the film a warmer contrast to the cold, dark, and gray 3D environments. As expected, with the short running length of 46 minutes, the three characters have simple dialogue to indicate their connection as friends and drive the minimalist plot forward. They lack distinct personalities, but they don't require them. The director only needed to emphasize their pre-existing bond in a struggle against cosmic horror entities. We're shown many disturbing sights in a dimension with a unique ecology. The scenes are grand in scale and call to mind the paintings of the Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, who depicted grim landscapes, perversions of lifeforms that resemble humans or other familiar creatures, cosmic entities, and body horror. Incidentally, Beksiński experimented with 3D models toward the end of his life, so had he made a film, it might have looked like this.
The film starts in a cliche manner typical of most horror films, but the reference to a Calabi-Yau space quickly becomes the core theme of the horror; the only thing one needs to know about this idea for the context of the film is that it applies to geometry and theoretical physics, and the reference succinctly details the complex structure and multiple dimensions of the film's world. The process of what happens is shown to us rather than told, and while one should end the film understanding the essence of what happened, an aura of mystery leaves it challenging to explain. Hence, Sakamoto strikes the right balance of being mysterious yet comprehensible.
Cosmic horror tends to be bleak and nihilistic, and with Amrita being a prequel that sets up Aragne, we know this can't end well. I've seen a few of these "Sisyphean" horror films that are repetitious, involving time loops or alternate dimensions folding in on each other, acting as an existential prison the characters hope to escape, but the experience tends to be banal. This film has an appropriate amount of mixed emotions to make the struggle meaningful, as the main character has a determination that is brilliantly shown in a simple but effective way, detailing the pain of an untold number of cycles in moments. Even the eventual capitulation has a surprising grace, elevating the characters above inconsequential meat bags whose only purpose is for the viewer to revel in the thrill of splatter.
