Catalyst Castle

Origin: Spirits of the Past is something of a misnomer for this anime feature film. The story has little to do with the origin of anything and it contains no spirits. The original Japanese title for the film is Gin-iro no Kami no Agito, which literally translates to Agito the Silver-Haired, and makes a lot more sense for this movie.

The story takes place 300 years in the future. Scientists experimenting with genetically engineered plants on the moon accidentally unleashed a new species of intelligent plant-life that shattered the moon and traveled to the Earth. This caused a disaster that wiped out civilization as we know it and covered much of the planet with a dangerous living forest. The surviving humans that appear in the movie are split into two different factions. The inhabitants of Neutral City try to adapt to life after the apocalypse and live in harmony with the forest, while the militaristic nation of Ragna wants to return the planet to the way it was before.

The main character is a boy named Agito. His father helped build Neutral City. While trespassing in the forest Agito discovers Toola, a girl from before the disaster, frozen in a stasis cell. He wakes her up and brings her back to the city. It turns out that she happens to be the daughter of the scientist who developed the new plant-life. The scientist also built a failsafe device that could destroy the new forest, and Ragna wants Toola’s cooperation in activating that device. Before long, Agito asks the forest for aid in rescuing Toola from Ragna. The forest grants him some of its power, turning him into a silver-haired, “enhanced” human with incredible strength and speed. That’s where the Japanese title comes in.

Overall, this was a pretty cool sci-fi flick. The story is rather spotty at parts, and there wasn’t really enough time for any significant character development, but the setting was pretty intriguing. It reminded me a bit of a post-apocalyptic setting of my own that I’ve been tossing around in my head for a while. While the soundtrack was nothing special, the animation was superb. It was every bit of the level of sophistication and beauty I’ve come to expect from Gonzo. Some of the visuals were thoroughly amazing from their concept to their execution. The intro sequence shows an awesome looking plant-dragon creature descending on the Earth. The scenes around Neutral City and deep in the forest are cool too. You can see how the artists took familiar modern locales such as malls and movie-theaters, turned them over, aged them, and covered them in overgrowth to create a unique and compelling image of a post-apocalyptic jungle. The mecha designs for Ragna’s army were neat too. Their tech had a lot of style, but with an air of industrialist practicality. I wouldn’t call this one of my favorite movies, but it is definitely pretty, and it presents a lot of ideas to mine for my own projects.

Roleplaying
Because of my obsession with roleplaying games, I tend to watch most movies and shows with an eye for what I could take from it and apply to gaming. Here are some ideas from Origin: Spirits of the Past.

Post-Apocalyptic Setting: As I mentioned above, I’ve been tossing around some ideas for a post-apocalyptic setting of my own for about 3 or 4 years now. I’d love to develop an RPG off of this setting, and I think I just recently decided on what system to use with that project so I might actually begin work on it sometime soon. The two different factions in this movie relate very well to two of the factions I had in mind for my setting, and I’ll probably borrow some specific ideas from the film.

Building a City in the Darkness: I could almost picture an RPG about Agito’s father and the other pioneers who built Neutral City as a bastion of safety in a dangerous world. I think it would be cool to play a game where the PCs have to fortify a safe haven against the perils that encroach from all sides. The idea is to encourage the players to get invested in a locale rather than to be just passing through. A game like this could work in a huge variety of settings from fantasy to science fiction or anything in between.