Production Companies Bandai Visual Co. Ltd., DENTSU Music And Entertainment Inc., Destination Films, Imagica Corp., Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co. Ltd., King Record Co. Ltd., Mad House Ltd., Madhouse Productions, Metropolis Project, Sony Pictures Television (Japan), Studio 4°C (CG
Metropolis: A future society, where humans and robots co-exist. A giant city-state, atop of which rests what could be termed a symbol of the advanced civilization, the newly completed skyscraper Ziggurat, where an opening ceremony is underway…
During the middle of a florid speech by Duke Red, the prime mover and shaker of Metropolis, a disruptive party crasher is shot and killed by a young security guard, But after it turns out the gatecrasher was just a robot, the young guard goes nonchalantly on his way. Two of the bystanders at the scene watch with great interest. They are Private Detective Shunsaku Ban and his traveling companion, his young brilliant nephew, Kenichi, both of whom have just arrived in Metropolis on the trail of a case.
Their investigation leads them to a laboratory, where a fire breaks out after they break in. Escaping by the skin of his teeth, Kenichi has a fateful encounter with a girl, Tima, who is actually the robotic double of Duke Red’s deceased daughter. Tima has no idea that she is a robot, nor is she aware of the fact that she was secretly imbued with enough power to control the world.
In the midst of the madness surrounding them, the human Kenichi and the robot Tima open their hearts to each other, even as they’re stalked by a persistent killer.
Adapted from Osamu Tezuka's 1949 manga, Metropolis (in Japanese with English subtitles) is an opulently beautiful film that fails to present a coherent story worthy of its extraordinary visuals. Evil Duke Red (voice by Taro Ishida) plans to rule the world from Ziggurat, his newly completed art deco tower. A new robot is being developed by his henchman Dr. Laughton (Junpei Takeguchi) to control all the machines in the world from Ziggurat. Japanese detective Shunsaku Ban (Kousei Tomita) and his nephew Kenichi (Kei Kobayashi) arrive in Metropolis in pursuit of Laughton and are plunged into Red's plot. When the duke's maniacal adopted son Rock (Kohki Okada) attacks Laughton's hidden lab, Kenichi and the waiflike android Tima (Yuka Imoto) flee into the city's subterranean slums and fall in love. Despite a protracted series of chases and violent shootouts, there's little excitement and less character development. Director Rintaro (Hayashi Shigeyuki) borrows heavily from Fritz Lang's 1926 Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, but his staging makes much of the action hard to follow. The film takes an unintentionally hilarious turn when Ziggurat crumbles to Ray Charles's "I Can't Stop Loving You." The computer-generated skyscrapers, machines, and airships offer dazzling vistas of an overscaled and sinister deco-dystopia. But Tezuka's flat little characters, with their big eyes, round noses, and bubble-shaped feet, don't fit into that realistic three-dimensional environment. MPAA rating: PG. Contains considerable violence and grotesque imagery. --Charles Solomon
DVD features The 3 1/4-inch "pocket DVD" includes production drawings, two scenes in various stages of production, and a short biography of Osamu Tezuka, the "god of manga," who was instrumental in creating both the animation and manga industries in Japan. The interesting but often frustrating making-of featurette focuses on director Rintaro, screenwriter Katsuhiro Otomo, voice actors Yuka Imoto (Tima) and Kei Kobayashi (Kenichi), and composer Toshiyuki Honda. Curiously, Rintaro and Otomo agree that Tezuka would never have given them permission to film this early manga; Rintaro adds that he fears being haunted by Tezuka's ghost. Honda explains why he needed to create a memorable theme song for the film, but not why he used a New Orleans jazz idiom. Although they include brief remarks from the computer graphics crew, the documentarians neglect the artists who designed the dazzling art deco skyscrapers that dominate the title city--and the film. --Charles Solomon
(15 votes)
3.
"Metropolis is the new milestone in anime. It has beauty, power, mystery and above all…heart. Images from this film will stay with you forever." -James Cameron
Brace yourself for a totally new experience in cutting edge animation. Based on the classic comic created by Osamu Tezuka (Astroboy), written by Japanese anime legend Katsuhiro Otomo (Akiro) and directed by Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999), Metropolis is a spectacular film featuring stunning imagery and unforgettable characters.
In the industrial, tri-level world of Metropolis, Duke Red is a powerful leader with plans to unveil a highly advanced robot named Tima. But Duke Red's violent son Rock distrusts robots, and intends to find and destroy Tima. Lost in the confusing labyrinth beneath Metropolis, Tima is beginning a friendship with the young nephew of a Japanese detective. But when Duke Red separates the two innocents, Tima's life -- and the fate of the universe -- is dangerously at stake.
(15 votes)
4.
A stunning piece of Japanese animation, Metropolis (2001) gets much of its visual look as well as its storyline less from the Fritz Lang classic than from Osamu Tezuka's comic book adaptation of it. In a style a reminiscent of Little Nemo and TinTin, Lang's dystopian fantasy is tweaked into the story of the doomed robot girl Tima and her love for Kenichi, nephew of a visiting Japanese detective. The city's ruler, Duke Red, needs her to complete his super-weapon, the Ziggurat, and has built her to resemble his dead daughter; the Duke's adopted son Rock is jealous and possessive of his father; and Tima's builder Laughton has agendas of his own. There are chases, riots, conflagrations and duels in the snow; unusually for Japanese animation the backgrounds are as inventively characterised as the characters who move through them. Screenwriter Katsuhiro Otomo and director Rintaro have deservedly moved from cult status to the mainstream on the strength of this film, which merits the epic tag so often attached to less interesting animations. --Roz Kaveney
(15 votes)
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