The following review assumes familiarity with the reviewed material spoilers below. One of the challenges of criticism is that its not always easy to explain why something works or doesnt. Sometimes this can actually almost be a positive marking something as a so good you have to see it for yourself sort of experience but sadly the opposite is the case with Expelled From Paradise a bafflingly dull CGI film produced by Toei Animation directed Seiji Mizushima animated by Graphinica and with a screenplay by Gen Urobuchi. It is a failure from all parties expected in some cases surprising in others. The simple fact of the matter is that above all else Expelled From Paradise is awkward. Deeply deeply awkward. In a way thatll be all too familiar for anyone who has watched anime for any length of time. A solid half of EFP is exposition and at that exposition about things that you the audience cannot reasonably be expected to care about. EFPs exposition is not unlike a lecture from the driest history professor imaginable except instead of learning about actual real history and its tangible impacts you are learning about the Nanocaust seriously and the construction of various colony ships. Its material that better handled could be genuinely interesting but the presentation here is beyond flat and its difficult to muster up any particular emotion about the backstory about 5 minutes after we learn of The Nanocaust were introduced to something that dates to before it which is clearly intended to be a revelation but because of the clipped structure it simply doesnt feel that way. The film is also preoccupied with a strange antitechnology agenda. A sharp contrast is made between our two leads DEVAemployed cybercop Angela and her Earthbound rugged I use the term loosely and of course male counterpart Dingo. The two barely have personalities and really are more standins for the philosophies they represent on the whole. Dingos is fairly clearly defined. Hes a natural freeliving sort who likes rock and roll and drives a jeep for the second time in this review I must emphasize yes seriously. Angelas is much murkier and while her nearblind loyalty to DEVA and its administrators is persistent throughout the first half of the film where most of this moralizing takes place the actual content of her philosophy shifts several times from conversation to conversation to the point that its kind of hard to say what really shes meant to stand for. There are a handful of times that EFP comes close to making something like an actual point a conversation in the films middle in particular seems like it might be headed toward a veiled condemnation of capitalismwhich hey is somethingbut then veers and Dingo makes the absolutely baffling declaration that life on Earth which he defines as being driven by pure luck is better than life on DEVA a sort of harsh meritocracy. At the end of the day neither character comes across particularly well in this department which is frustrating because again both seem like they could be interesting in other circumstances handled better and propped up by better writing. Here they are caricatures and worse its not even clear caricatures of what. It must be mentioned that the dialog being rigor mortisstiff contributes a lot here. No onepast present or futuresays aloud things like we should consider not only the defense ramifications but public opinion in emotiondriven spoken speech. Whether this can be attributed to translation or the writing itself is ambiguous but to say that it comes across as wooden is an insult to the many fine usesboth practical and decorativeof wood itself. The AI introduced in the films second half revealed to be Frontier Setter from the introduction is actually the films most charming character by far if simply because he isnt meant to grandstand for some kind of moral agenda and has no stanceat least not one were givenon the Earthlander/DEVA conflict plus: at one point he remixes a song which has to count for something. But by the time hes developed the film is already nearing its end having already been crushingly boring for a solid half of its runtime. So is the film without redeeming qualities? No for one thing most of these complaints are about the films first twothirds. By its final stretch it effectively becomes a different movie entirely as the focus shifts from Dingo and Angela on their mission to Angela and Frontier evading the forces of the DEVA ship. The plot takes a firm backseat to the action here and the battles between Angela and the DEVA mechas are cool enough that you wish there were more of them in the film. Sadly EFP cant avoid itself and the film ends in disappointing and predictable fashion Angela chooses to remain on Earth with Dingo instead of leaving to the stars with Frontier and in the end the entire experience feels like it was for nothing in particular. On top of that there are so many minor quibbles. Angelas body being explicitly pointed out as physically 16 for no good reason the fact that Frontier has a guitar strapped to his back for much of the second half of the film despite not having hands one of the films last shots being a shot of a baseball cap falling to the ground Dingo singing a shitty guywithanacoustic version of the ending credits theme itself pleasant enough before the real one kicks in the absolutely baffling decision to set so little of the film in cyberspace despite it starting there and cyberpsychadelia being an obvious choice for depicting in a fullCGI film. Lastly there are the intangibles EFP simply doesnt feel correct. Shots linger for just too long or cut just too quickly the dialogue isnt laughably terrible but not a single memorable line is spoken the animation is competent but never rises above JRPG Cutscene excepting the final confrontation and really nothing interesting happens At the end of the day Expelled From Paradise is a profoundly average piece of media. It is technically competent on a basic level and has no glaring shortcomings in terms of literal execution it tells a story that progresses from start to end more or less coherently but these are all very low bars to clear. Expelled From Paradise commits the double sin of both not aspiring to be anything particularly interesting and failing to even fully fulfill its already conservative ambitions. If it is recommendable on any level its as a baseline in many ways EFP is too bland and too competent to be truly terrible and in that sense it is genuinely almost exactly average. If you could create a computer capable of generating anime films from scratch Expelled From Paradise is the sort of thing it might come up with. Technically proficient but on every artistic level it simply isnt anything interesting.