A Tree of Palme
Review:
The green-skinned, red-eyed Shatta prepares to attack.
Palme, Popo, Pu, and Mu.If some fantasy anime are dreams, then A Tree of Palme is a nightmare, a world with subtle but terrifying horror. Palme is a mechanical puppet, made from the wood of a Kooloop tree. Without a steady supply of the trees' oil, he'll turn back into a Kooloop himself. He was created to provide assistance and friendship to Xian, who spent her life looking for a rare oil called Crosskala. In the wake of her death, her husband watches over the now inactive Palme and continues to search for the oil that, as he says "doesn't exist."
A word on the style of this movie - I mentioned that A Tree of Palme is dreamlike. Twisted and bizarre plants float above the ground, and a great stone pillar goes from the underworld to beyond the sky. A Tree of Palme addresses some very serious issues, although somehow the message becomes a bit muddy here and there.
One night, a mysteriously reactivated Palme meets a woman, Koram, from the the underworld, Tamas, being pursued by three warriors of Tamas. She tells him to go to Tamas with the Egg of Touto, the world beyond the sky. Xian's husband integrates the egg into Palme's body, along with the CrossKala oil both Palme and the egg need to survive.
With instructions to take the egg to Soma, a godlike Kooloop tree in Tamas, and his remaining family killed by the warriors, Palme heads out. It isn't long before Palme finds a gang of children, including Pu and Mu, which are not human and vaguely resemble Palme, and Shatta, who also happens to be from Tamas. Shatta is a masterful fighter, more or less holding his own with a sword against the warriors that were following Koram.
Palme also meets Popo, a girl with a manipulative and abusive mother. Popo has also attracted the unwanted attention of a merchant (just to make it absolutely clear what the merchant has in mind, A Tree of Palme hits us over the head with this point by having Popo's mother complain that he's sending gifts to a "girl that hasn't even grown breasts yet." In fairness, this is part of an overall theme, as the gang recruits members from children it rescues from slavers and Koram's father was also abusive). When Palme learns about Soma's power from the other characters, he decides to petition the tree-god to become a human in exchange for the egg, and Shatta, Popo, Pu, and Mu join him in his quest to go to Tamas.
Rating: 2/5 - Not bad
Format: MOVIE
Added to FanCruft: April 30th 2006
[Buy A Tree of Palme at Amazon]
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| Angst: 6 |
Overlord: 1 |
Experimental: 9 |
Mech: 3 |
Weird: 10 |
Action: 7 |
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