There are two popular names from the anime world connected to this movie. There is, for instance, the screenplay for Rakuen Tsuihou written by Urobuchi Gen, who is responsible for animes like Aldnoah.Zero, Psycho-Pass and Fate/Zero, among others. The director of this movie is Mizushima Seiji who produced titles like Fullmetal Alchemist and Mobile Suit Gundam 00. The downside to a movie like Rakuen Tsuihou is that the idea behind the movie isn’t exactly original and has been told in previous movies and different media. There’s DEVA, a virtual reality, in which most of humanity subsides. Aside from that there’s also a small amount of people who live their lives on earth. At a certain point DEVA gets hacked by someone from earth who calls himself Frontier Setter. One way or another Frontier Setter manages to evade DEVA’s security measures. The DEVA system therefore sees him as a threat and sends a few people to earth to find and stop him, among these people Angela Balzac. The question is whether Rakuen Tsuihou is different enough from other movies and media with the same story behind it.
The first thing that stood out to me was the style of the anime, you immediately see a lot of CGI (Computer Generated Images) in this anime. Although this can sometimes be annoying because of style differences within one movie, that is definitely not the case in Rakuen Tsuihou. Because the entire movie has been built up out of CGI it makes for a beautiful consistent style and I thought this was amazing to see. There were a few moments where it stood out to me that the animations weren’t running very smoothly, this mainly seems to be the case with simple movements. At moments where it really counts they did the animations very well. In a movie with mecha’s you also expect some action and these moments are great to watch. Unfortunately Rakuen Tsuihou doesn’t have as much action as you’d expect and that is basically the biggest downside to this movie.
Most people are already familiar with the story this movie tells and it doesn’t add much to it. Apart from Dingo most of the characters aren’t very spectacular or exciting. There’s Angela Balzac for instance, our protagonist, who behaves like a pretty typical tsundere in most of the movie. Dingo is about the only character that seems to really add something to this movie. And the fact that the movie doesn’t show much action until the end means that up until then you’re stuck in a pretty average story without many surprises.
Of course a movie about a dystopian world with an alternate reality can’t exist without somewhat of a philosophical side to it and this they did manage to bring across well. There are plenty of comparisons made between DEVA, Frontier Setter and the earthlings. Sadly they do seem to pick a side even though it would’ve been more entertaining if they’d left that decision up to the viewers themselves.
The movie as a whole could’ve used had a better tempo because it can be hard to get through the middle part of the movie. Which is a pity because they do sometimes manage to show that Rakuen Tsuihou can be entertaining to watch. Sadly, in my opinion, they clearly chose a side near the end of the movie. Luckily the movie did manage to distinguish itself enough to be entertaining and the CGI was also well done which made watching this movie only more pleasant.
Studios: Graphinica
Released on: 15th of November 2014
Rating: 75/100
