Revisiting media firsts is always a fascinating experience. While some trailblazers are still as stunning as they were on the day they were released, others have noticeably dated as later works took what made them unique and improved on it. This is equally true with projects based around computer animation, which has advanced quickly and constantly. As a result, older CGI shows can be hard to watch as they have dated quite heavily. But is this true of the first fully-CGI anime?
Arriving on screens in the year 2000, A.LI.CE is considered by many to be the first entirely computer-animated anime. While other anime movies and series had experimented with computer animation before, A.LI.CE was the first anime film to be made entirely with 3D CG models, making it a massive milestone in anime and animation history.
The Plot of A.LI.CE, the First Fully-CGI Anime
The film follows Alice, a young schoolgirl living in the year 2000 who is recovering from her friend's death. However, while going through this, she wins a contest and is awarded a free trip to the Moon -- making Alice the youngest person to ever go into space. However, this exciting trip doesn't go smoothly as the shuttle she's on crashes into a snowy wasteland -- and Alice soon learns that only she and the ship's robot SS1X survived the crash.
She soon meets a young man called Yuan who tells her the terrible truth: Alice somehow ended up in Lapland in 2030, and the world only has 1 billion people left as a dictator called Nero and his computer SS10X are removing any humans they find. This throws Alice into a massive war, far beyond anything she could have imagined. The situation forces her to do some strange things to survive, all while working out everyone's true motivations.
How Does A.LI.CE's Use of CGI Hold Up in 2022?
Naturally, A.LI.CE is showing its age when it comes to visuals. Everything looks like it's from an early-2000s video game due to the characters' odd proportions and stiff movements. This is most noticeable when the movie is focused on human characters with uncovered faces; most of them have a very uncomfortable look, which pushes them straight into the uncanny valley. This gets worse during action scenes as all the characters move stiffly and unnaturally, and their limbs often move in ways human limbs shouldn't.
It isn't all bad, however. The visuals have a certain charm to them, especially for viewers old enough to have lived through this era of early CGI. It works well during the movie's more surreal moments -- especially scenes set in otherworldly locations -- giving A.LI.CE a strange and uneasy atmosphere. These unusual surroundings help convey Alice's confusion at ending up in this unfamiliar and dystopian world.
However, it isn't just the visuals that have dated. While the core concept is fascinating and features a few unique ideas, including some well-executed twists, this style of sci-fi narrative feels very tired today. It is especially noticeable when the characters talk about technology. These scenes have a distinctive tone that was omnipresent in early-2000s sci-fi tech babble scenes. The story is also sometimes messy and hard to follow, with some sequences feeling like they were only included so the animators could show off the CGI technology. This means some viewers may be scratching their head by the movie's end, unsure of what exactly they've just watched.
While it doesn't hold up well today, A.LI.CE is a captivating movie that provides a fascinating glimpse at the early days of CGI animation. You have to hand it to the creators, as making something of this scope and scale in early-2000s CGI couldn't have been an easy undertaking. And though A.LI.CE doesn't quite stand on its own merits anymore, it is worth a watch as a fine example of how far computer animation has come in such a short time.