Angel’s Egg 4K Remaster Tours Festivals Around the World
Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano’s haunting 1985 classic Angel’s Egg is finding new life. The Manchester Animation Festival announced on Tuesday that it will screen the film’s 4K remaster at its 2025 edition, held at the HOME complex and other venues in Manchester from November 9 to 13.
That booking is one stop on a long festival journey. The remaster held its world premiere at Cannes in May, then traveled to Fantastic Fest in Austin and the New York Film Festival, with further showings at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles and the Sitges festival in Spain. In North America, GKIDS will begin screening it on November 19, and the film is also joining HBO Max through a new partnership with GKIDS.
The restoration itself was announced by Tokuma Shoten in 2024 and built from a fresh scan of a 35mm negative, with France based Gebeka International handling worldwide sales. Originally released as an OVA in 1985, Angel’s Egg was directed by Oshii at Studio DEEN, with a story he and Amano conceived together, a screenplay by Oshii, art direction by Amano, and music by Yoshihiro Kanno.
For decades the film was hard to see in the West. It did not get a proper Western release in its original form until the Japan Society screened it in 2023, though some of its imagery had surfaced earlier in spliced form in the 1987 film In the Aftermath.
My take: Angel’s Egg is one of those quiet, dreamlike films that rewards patience, and seeing it in 4K on a big screen feels like a gift. If you have only heard whispers about it, this is the moment to finally seek it out.
