Help me find old anime about mysterious coffin...

odysseus

Completely Average High School Student
Hello all,

Finding this film has bugged me for years and years, and after sporadically searching for it on google, consulting ChatGPT, and posting on a couple subreddits, I’m almost convinced this thing is unsolvable. It’s very possible the title I’m looking for is an OVA or a short film or part of an anthology (in fact I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this is so) that has become hard to find over the years.

When I was a child in Kosovo, around 2008, I saw this intriguing anime film, probably from the late 80s/90s about a young man who’s the sole surviver of humanity in a sci-fi post-apocalyptic setting. His sole comrade is a robot who doesn’t provide much in the way of companionship, so in order to end his loneliness he attempts to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a blaster pistol to no avail (which I guess meant he was special in some way?).

He explores the desolate and barren surroundings of his base (not sure if it’s set on Earth or not) in a speeder or ship of some kind, and in his travels finds a sealed coffin with a timer on it, which is set to expire in many years. While at first elated, since he thinks it might contain another human frozen or something, he grows desperate as he tries in vain to open it, and eventually the rest of the film finds him waiting for decades for the timer to finish. I can’t remember exactly what ends up being inside the casket or whether there’s anything in it at all, but it’s not something the audience would expect. By the end of the film, the young character is an old man with a long white beard, and his only desire in life is finding out what’s inside the casket. The central plot is derived from the coffin, as both us and the audience try to guess what’s inside, and eventually over whether it matters what is inside as this man spends his entire life waiting for it to open so his life is given meaning. Overall the tone is very abstract and the whole thing plays a lot like an art film trying to raise equations about humanity.

I don’t remember much else, but I’ll try to help answer any other questions. And before someone mentions it, it’s not Angel’s Egg, though the style is very similar.

Many thanks!
 
Do you know what language the film was in? The fact that it seems to be so hard to find anything that matches your description makes me wonder if it might have been a Japanese-European co-production. So much of English-language anime fandom is focused solely on Japanese films that, if it was considered a French film for example, it might be harder to find information on in English.
 
Do you know what language the film was in? The fact that it seems to be so hard to find anything that matches your description makes me wonder if it might have been a Japanese-European co-production. So much of English-language anime fandom is focused solely on Japanese films that, if it was considered a French film for example, it might be harder to find information on in English.

I thought the same, though I can't think of a film that matches the description, good luck with your search OP! :)
 
As others have mentioned, this gives off the feeling of a European/Japanese co-production. I tried doing a bit of searching around on IMDB and Google to find out more about companies that participated in those kinds of co-productions in the 80s and 90s, but didn't have any luck narrowing it down. I did find a couple of interesting articles, but they likely won't be much help in identifying this movie.



 
Do you know what language the film was in? The fact that it seems to be so hard to find anything that matches your description makes me wonder if it might have been a Japanese-European co-production. So much of English-language anime fandom is focused solely on Japanese films that, if it was considered a French film for example, it might be harder to find information on in English.
Very interesting. I hadn’t considered it might be an international co-production. I’ll definitely explore this angle since nothing has yielded any results.

Unfortunate since it was aired on a kid’s channel the film was dubbed in Albanian, so I’ve got no clue what the original language might’ve been. Since the film was indeed dubbed, there would’ve been at least some work put into it which means some record would’ve survived, but I’ve already tried to look at all recorded shows and films aired around that time period on the pertinent channels, with no results. Then again, old anime aired in Eastern Europe 15 odd years ago aren’t gonna be the best documented on the internet.

Regardless this has become somewhat of an obsession so I’ve got to find it. I’ll try out using the European co-production route and looking more into Albanian broadcasts of the time.

Thanks for your help! Add this to the total—bring the trial on!
 
As others have mentioned, this gives off the feeling of a European/Japanese co-production. I tried doing a bit of searching around on IMDB and Google to find out more about companies that participated in those kinds of co-productions in the 80s and 90s, but didn't have any luck narrowing it down. I did find a couple of interesting articles, but they likely won't be much help in identifying this movie.



Interesting articles indeed! I’ll have to check them out when I get a moment. Like I said in another reply identifying the language through memory alone is impossible, but I’ll have to look more deeply into European co-productions.

Many thanks!
 
The plot kinda sounds like something out of Robot Carnival (1987), it's a collection of 9 short animated movies involving robots. Robot Carnival Although the plot you described doesn't quite align with them. Are you sure you aren't combining multiple stories together with that description?
 
Thought the same but I read through descriptions of all the segments of RC and nothing seemed familiar. I might just watch it anyway though cause it seems to be something I’d like regardless.

Pretty sure I’m not combining multiple stories, and far as I can tell none of the segments include some of the key plot points I mentioned
 
Alright, this is mind-blowing actually because I too am a guy from Kosovo and have been searching about this exact animated movie for sooooo long. In fact, when Grok suggested this article to me, I thought I was the OP even though I couldn't remember creating an account here. But turns out someone else, from the same tiny country has had the same experience as me, about a really interesting movie that for whatever reason, has left a mark even though we were small kids when we saw it.

I also remember seeing this in an Albanian dubbed channel but never have been able to find it no matter how much I wanted. I wanted to add that since the movie has been impossible to identify until now, it probably isn't Japanese, with that said, the channel OP is talking about, have lots of times dubbed movies from Italy, so could this animated movie be Italian!?

You describe the movie in a slightly different way though, I could be misremembering but I remember it with some small differences.
-The man who grows old actually has a lover and she dies, she is put in a coffin with a timer on. He lives to see "the end of the world?" and doesn't understand why he is the one to live this long. He lives to see humanity reborn again. All I remember is he says around the end of the movie "I now understand why I lived this long".

This article is 2 years old though, any updates?
 
Might this be the last arc (future arc) of the Phoenix anime 2004 (hi no tori)? I'm not totally sure, but it definitely has some overlapping elements.

Edit: just re watched a bit of episode 13 of the phoenix tv anime and it does have the almost the same plot as what you described, @artemis. I wonder if this was remade into a movie in Kosovo..? I know there are also older OVA's of hi no tori (as it is based on a famous manga) , so if this looks different, maybe its one of those? Take a look:).

Edit 2: I found this episode on youtube:
 
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Might this be the last arc (future arc) of the Phoenix anime 2004 (hi no tori)? I'm not totally sure, but it definitely has some overlapping elements.

Edit: just re watched a bit of episode 13 of the phoenix tv anime and it does have the almost the same plot as what you described, @artemis. I wonder if this was remade into a movie in Kosovo..? I know there are also older OVA's of hi no tori (as it is based on a famous manga) , so if this looks different, maybe its one of those? Take a look:).

Edit 2: I found this episode on youtube:
No way, you did it.

This is it, finally and you found it in Albanian too LOL.

Thank you so much. Blessings. I hope the OP sees this as well.
 
No way, you did it.

This is it, finally and you found it in Albanian too LOL.

Thank you so much. Blessings. I hope the OP sees this as well.
Yesss! I always love it when someone helps me find something I only can vaguely remember from my youth, so I'm happy I could do that for you too:)! It was fun to go all detective mode:). Hope you'll enjoy the rewatch.
 
Might this be the last arc (future arc) of the Phoenix anime 2004 (hi no tori)? I'm not totally sure, but it definitely has some overlapping elements.

Edit: just re watched a bit of episode 13 of the phoenix tv anime and it does have the almost the same plot as what you described, @artemis. I wonder if this was remade into a movie in Kosovo..? I know there are also older OVA's of hi no tori (as it is based on a famous manga) , so if this looks different, maybe its one of those? Take a look:).

Edit 2: I found this episode on youtube:
You crazy bunch of folks have actually done it! I can't really believe that this itch at the back my brain has finally been scratched. I do seem to remember the anime having a slightly different animation style, and very slight plot deviations but there's no doubt that this is the one. There's a chance that the Kosovo company that got the rights to it used a different master at different points, changing the film grain, aspect ratio, etc. Or, my memory is just faulty, as it has been nearly 20 years since I first saw this :)

I wanna say thank you to @artemis for commenting and bringing this back as it probably would have been buried for evermore (much like the coffin ;) flm shoku), and to @Dai for showing the manga and the older Hi no Tori anime adaptations; the style of these seems a lot more similar to what I remember, but they don't seem to have adapted the story I'm on about, will have to look through these maybe. My biggest thanks however have to go to @Herano ! Without you none of this would have been possible: you've made both artemis and I v happy. Like I said, this wraps up a multi-year quest for me, so thanks very much for your help, I appreciate the time you've given us.

All the best guys,
O

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