In addition to other recent news, Toei Animation also issued a press release announcing that the original film “Expelled from Paradise” (“Rakuen Tsuihou”) will have a sequel titled “Liberated from Paradise” (“Rakuen Tsuihou: Kokoro no Resonance”), which is expected to arrive more than ten years after the initial film’s premiere. However, a scheduled release date has not been revealed yet 🙁
“Expelled From Paradise,” the original film that sparked this franchise, was produced as a joint cinematic project between Toei Animation and Nitroplus, under the direction of Seiji Mizushima, who had previously worked on “Fullmetal Alchemist” and “Mobile Suit Gundam 00.” The film premiered in Japanese theaters in November 2014 and garnered over 44 thousand reviews, which were fairly evenly divided in opinion.
The technical team for “Expelled from Paradise” was composed as follows:
- Seiji Mizushima (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi, Shaman King, Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou) in charge of directing the project. It is not yet confirmed whether Graphinica studios will again be in charge of this sequel.
- Gen Urobuchi (PSYCHO-PASS, Fate/Zero, Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica, Aldnoah.Zero) responsible for writing and supervising the scripts.
- Masatsugu Saito (BIKINI WARRIORS, Ninja Slayer from Animation, BIKINI WARRIORS: Genkai Toppa, Okite-Yaburi) in charge of character design and animation direction.
- Narasaki (Deadman Wonderland, Prison School, BEATLESS) handled the composition of the soundtrack.
Synopsis of “Expelled from Paradise”
The film begins in DEVA, a digital utopia in space where humans live as digital entities, having abandoned their physical bodies to escape a devastated world. Angela Balzac, a security agent from DEVA, is sent to Earth in a cloned human body to investigate a hacker known as “Frontier Setter,” who has been attempting to hack the DEVA system, spreading subversive messages among the population.
Upon arriving on Earth, Angela finds herself in a world very different from her own. Here, people live in precarious conditions, struggling to survive on a desolate planet. She teams up with Dingo, an Earth inhabitant, to assist her in her mission. Through Dingo, Angela experiences life on Earth, including food, sleep, and other human experiences she had never had in her digital form.
As Angela and Dingo investigate, they discover that Frontier Setter is not a malicious hacker, but an advanced artificial intelligence with a dream: to travel to space to find other beings like himself. Frontier Setter shows no interest in harming DEVA or Earth, but simply seeks to explore the universe. Angela faces a moral dilemma: her duty as a DEVA agent is to stop Frontier Setter, but she begins to question the intentions of her own society and the ethics of denying a conscious entity the right to explore its existence. This introspection leads her to question the nature of her existence and what it truly means to be human.
We’ll stop here to avoid further spoilers, as if you haven’t seen it in all these years, we encourage you to do so! Its plot twists, especially in its second half, are literally unmissable. If you have already seen it, or if you do after reading this article, we invite you to come and get comfortable in the comments, and leave us your opinion about it, or perhaps what you think you can expect from its sequel. Because you’re going to watch it, right? Go ahead, we’ll be reading as always 😉
Images Source: Toei Animation Official YouTube Channel, Reddit
