Deadline revealed on Friday that France-based Gebeka International has acquired the worldwide sales rights to Tokuma Shoten‘s 4K remaster of Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano‘s 1985 anime Angel’s Egg (Tenshi no Tamago). Deadline noted the film will “be made available this year in 4K formats suitable for Dolby cinema, theatrical and home theatre.”

Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch International) and animation company Gebeka Films created Gebeka International in 2021, and the company focuses on animation.

The remaster is based on a new scan of a 35mm film print of the anime. Oshii himself is supervising the remaster, which celebrates the anime’s upcoming 40th anniversary.

The Angel’s Egg original video anime (OVA) launched in Japan in 1985. Oshii directed the OVA at Studio DEEN. Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano conceived the story, and Oshii wrote the screenplay and directed. Amano also handled the art direction. Hiroshi Hasegawa, Masao Kobayashi, Mitsunori Miura, and Yutaka Wada produced the film. Yoshihiro Kanno composed the music.

The Japan Society hosted a screening of the film at its museum in New York City on September 10. The Japan Society describes the story:

Taking place in a seemingly quiescent time, two nameless strangers—a girl bearing a mystical egg and a man with a cruciate cane—journey across a primordial realm of decadent ruins, primitive fish and fossilized relics. An allegorical fantasy enriched by symbolism and biblical allusion, Oshii’s beautifully melancholic OVA ruminates on the tragic underpinnings of existence in a world untouched by God.

Prior to last year’s screening by The Japan Society, the anime had not received a release in the West in its original form. Carl Colpaert’s live-action/animated 1987 film In the Aftermath spliced footage from the film.

Source: Deadline (Melanie Goodfellow)