YMMV / Origin: Spirits of the Past

• Ass Pull: After Agito becomes a tree, he is reborn from a fruit dangling from some said tree, clothes and all. While it makes thematic sense, this ability was not hinted at.
• Awesome Music:
  • The movie's theme song "With Reflection" is gorgeous. The full name is Chouwa Oto ~With Reflection~, and it's by KOKIA, a prominent name in anime music (the artist did a wonderful cover of "Desperado" by The Eagles). Here's an obligatory link to the original.
  • The ending piece "Ai no Melody" (lit. "Melody of Love") is a beautiful, glorious mix of awesome which manages to be both a Crowning Music of Heartwarming and a Tear Jerker.
• Cliché Storm: Almost all the reviews, both good and bad, noted that the movie's main flaw was that it stormed all the tropes and Aesops made famous by Studio Ghibli and played them straight, making it look like an unoriginal mix of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. Additional flaws, like the movie's tiring pacing and lack of character development, only added to it.
• Fridge Horror: Schunack talks of "wiping the slate clean" in regards to humanity and keeps a firm hold on Toola even after she has served her purpose with the Raban. It is frightful to consider what he planned to do to her after he killed all the other humans. Was he planning on repopulating the earth?
• Memetic Mutation: TOOOOOLAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
• Moral Event Horizon: At first, Shunack may appear to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist and some people could sympathize (or even agree) with his ideal of bringing back the old civilization and his desire to undo his mistakes, even though it means destroying the Forest. Then he reveals that he intends to use E.S.T.O.C. to destroy Neutral City as well, simply out of spite. That decision shows that he has jumped off the slippery slope, no matter how much well-intentioned he used to be.
• Narm: The walking volcano, in all its glorious implausibility.
• Special Effect Failure: Many forest monsters are made with very unconvincing CGI.
• Strawman Has a Point: While Shunack is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wishes to undo the damages done to Earth and correct his mistake, he's still supposed to be in the wrong as he advocates for dangerous and extremist measures. However, some fans end up siding with his cause, arguing that it would be a good thing to destroy the Forest based on Blue-and-Orange Morality.

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