Amrita no Kyouen

Feast of Amrita is a prequel to the surreal horror film Aragne: Sign of Vermillion, seeing a return of the oppressive apartment complex as the primary set piece and neatly tying the two together with an ending sequence that readapts the opening of Aragne, where the protagonist finds her "dream apartment." While this prequel fails to rehabilitate Aragne or ameliorate its flaws and deficiencies, Amrita might make that frustrating experience more understandable. True to most memorable horror, the sound design and atmosphere are the dominant aspects of the film.

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.

Nauseating. Hurts to look at. Gave me motion sickness. Sounds good.

Okay, the most glaring issue Amrita no Kyouen has is the animation style. It has this low framerate look reminiscent of a flipbook. It's a very particular style and I can almost imagine how it was made. It looks like a live action performance filmed in front of a green screen and awkwardly keyed in front of the background. Characters sometimes slide around on the ground as they stand still. Then they got some rotoscoping artists to draw over the actors but only on every 10 frames to save time. Finally, any time the camera ... needs to move, add a ton of motion blur. Yeah, it's really hard to look at and unfortunately this might be a hurdle that a lot of viewers are not willing to move past.

It's not all bad though. This anime is actually a sign of improvement. "Amrita" is a prequel of sorts to indie filmmaker Saku Sakamoto's 2018 work Aragne no Mushikago. Sakamoto's techniques have clearly improved since "Aragne", as the uncanny valley inducing 3D models, and vapid characters devoid of any design elements, save for intensely detailed eyes, are not present in "Amrita". Instead, characters have a markedly more pleasing appearance that elicits vague memories of some mid-2000s anime film. The characters' movements are actually fairly lifelike, but it's hard to tell as the low framerate disguises it nicely. And the obvious CGI in "Aragne"? It's only kind of noticeable in "Amrita".

Sakamoto seems to also have ditched the drunken cameraman he hired for "Aragne" or at least got him to sober up a little. The frame only occasionally (rather than constantly) wobbles panickily in all directions as if imitating the eyes of an onlooker who is so terrified that they are about to wet themselves. Alright, alright... Maybe it's supposed to look unsettling. Maybe all these production and design choices that I'm criticizing were used intentionally to set the atmosphere. This IS a horror movie after all, it's supposed to be uncomfortable. And if that was the intention, then it was certainly achieved. But instead of having to turn away from the screen due to the sheer horror of it all, I had to look away to find the nearest trash can.

There is some actual praise to be had for "Amrita" though, and that praise belongs to the sound design. There isn't a musical score, but instead a masterfully woven blend of silence, ambient noise, and rich, lush sound effects. Goopy bodies melting through the ceiling. Footsteps echoing down a vacant, dripping corridor while the crinkling of an unseen threat approaches. A metal wrench clinking against other tools and clunking to the floor. The warm pulsating innards of some disgusting creature. Every single movement, each action is accompanied by lovingly hand crafted sounds, tailored to the specific needs of every scene. With very little dialogue present, the narrative is driven forward almost entirely by the sound design. Simply, "Amrita" is nothing short of a masterclass in sound production.

All-in-all, it's not a terrible film, especially for an independent effort, and there are good elements at play here. Just come prepared with an ibuprofen and a barf bag.

Amrita no Kyouen, also known as The Feast of Amrita, is terrible and you shouldn't watch it. The only good thing about this anime is the duration: instead of a full length movie you'll get "only" 47 minutes of bad animation and poorly written nonsense which of course is still a painfully long time anyway.

If you like character development you'd better forget about it because there is none, and this is probably the most forgivable aspect since the anime is quite short, but it's also due to the nature of this movie which is basically a plotless sequence of surreal and gory deaths. To ... be clear, horror is a respectable genre and there is nothing wrong in making it a little bit more sophisticated, but this is not the case. This is technically a prequel to another movie but nothing in this makes sense and nothing is explained. The authors probably wanted to generate some kind of anxiety or suspense in the viewer but they failed because the anime doesn't make it. It's just bland and boring.

Visually it's not bad, the art style is ok and the setting is uncanny enough for a horror anime. On the other hand, animation is very choppy and the characters move like in a laggy, low fps videogame.

In conclusion Amrita no Kyouen is definitely not worth watching: there are plenty of anime which somehow manage to be bad in a funny way and still can provide a good laughter, but this one is not even suitable to be "so bad it's good" material. It's just bad.