Metropolis

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

The Anime one.

Holy crap this movie is gorgeous looking. Absolutely stunningly detailed background and unusually fluid and realistic movement from the animation. No surprise Katsuhiro Otomo, of Akira and Steamboy fame, was involved. And like those two film the finale features mind boggillingly huge city wide destruction so lovingly rendered. It truly is a joy to look at.

Based on the manga by Astro Boy creator and all-round father of anime, Osamu Tezuka, this film is like someone mis-remembered Fritz Lang's classic. No surprise to find out after watching it that Tezuka saw the poster for that film, but not the movie, and then came up with this story as what he thought it was about. It features some similar imagery, A beautiful girl robot in a chair and some general civil unrest and social uprising and huge retro-future cityscapes but they are not the same film at all.

The character designs, like Astro Boy, look like something from the very early years of animation. Rather fittingly the music in the film feels feels like something from the 20's or 30's. It's great stuff.

As for the story, It's pretty good but, like my only problem with Akira, there a few scenes at the start where it gets bogged down in long political conversations where I loose track of what they are talking about and what is going on. It's all good at the end though.

I enjoyed this one, I don;t know why it took me so long to get around to it, but with the Anime convention on last weekend and the festival on all week on TV I though it's about time I caught up with some. I got a few more as well, so we'll see how I go.