Review for Metropolis by Alysen hebert

Synopsis: Osamu Tezuka, the father of all anime wrote a manga and then they gave it to the writer of Akira to write the screenplay, and Rintaro, the twisted artist behind Galaxy Express and the Harlock Saga to draw. It's a future story with the cute old "Can machines love" sort of message. Will humanity take its technology too far? What if robots take over our jobs and we get grumpy? Does predjudice towards robots really count as bigotry? Is this ending sequence actually Akira in disguise? I can't really sum it up without giving away huge plots, but here:

Evil Duke meets doctor, has doctor make robot designed after Duke's dead daughter, Doctor does, but then the Duke's evil adopted son kills doctor and tries to kill robot because it's a robot, Boy meets robot girl, boy saves robot girl, boy and robot girl run for their life from Evil Duke's adopted son, yadda yadda, big weapon, end of world, bow down to Duke, robot girl loves boy, but how can that be, she's a robot, can robots love blah blah blah.

Review: As you might have noticed, I'm not as stoked about this movie as I was about D. But can you blame me? At least D had gorgeous character designs. The problem with Osamu Tezuka and Rintaro-san's character designs is that they were trying to be Disney. Hey, buddy, I watch anime to get AWAY from Disney, alright? Plus, a lot of them sort of almost looked like Galaxy Express characters drawn with a steadier hand, perhaps WITH the light on this time. The writer, the man who wrote Akira, decided about halfway through that he'd just substitute the ending with Akira's ending, probably to save time so he could go off and gloat "I wrote Akira, look at me, ooh, Akira" or something. I mean, there's that famous scene in Akira, where Tetsuo's sitting on the throne, and his hand's got stuff oozing out of it, little cable dealies, and Kaneda is trying to get him off of it... Well, in Metropolis, Tima (aforementioned robot girl) is sitting... You guessed it, on a throne, and stuff is growing out of her, and Kenichi (said boy) is trying to get her off of it, by endlessly screaming her name. (Do I even have to draw the analogy there, or do you all remember the endless "KANEDA!!!!!! KANEDA!!!!!!! AKIRA!!!!!!!!!" from Akira?) Don't get me wrong, I love Akira dearly and I watch it whenever I can, but I also don't want to see it in another movie drawn by the Rintaro guy. I love Rintaro, I mean, Harlock was great, but... This just didn't flip my switch, ya know? Also, the background was entirely CG'd, and with Rintaro's drawings, it just doesn't jive well. It looks like it didn't quite juxtopose right, and almost disconnected, detached, or whatever. Regardless, there were a few good parts of the movie that redeem it, and almost made me give it three or four stars.

1: The fact that Tristar actually had it SUBTITLED. Bravo boys, you finally figured out that anime fans don't WANT to see dubbed, and dubbing it is NOT going to get regular movie people to see it. You can't trick them. They hear Japan and Animation in the same sentence and go "Right, well then, let's go see A Beautiful Mind", and the thought of dubbed can sometimes make me cringe and drop things. It was well subbed, as well, yellow. A good color for subtitles.

2: THE MUSIC. Oh my god, I nearly died, the music was the best part of the movie. Picture old timey big band/jazz songs. Like Fats Domino and others of such notariety. Now picture a five minute scene where a tower explodes, a bunch of people die, and Kenichi struggles to get Tima to remember him and not throw him off of the top of said exploding tower... ENTIRELY TO THAT SORT OF MUSIC!!! I don't know the name of the song, but it goes "I can't stop wa...nting you... It's useless to say..." And it's all slow and has a huge choir of background singers in it. I'm still humming it, and I saw Metropolis like three or four days ago. I have a feeling it'll be with me for a while...

So in conclusion, I like Akira, I like Galaxy Express 999, an I like Tezuka's Astro Boy, but I don't want to see them all together. It's like an overload, and it doesn't mesh well. Water and oil, really. but, because it IS supposedly the pinnacle of anime, and it represents the new wave, and all, you really should see it. Just be prepared to see flawless backgrounds mixed with choppy, Disney-styled, bizarrely drawn little pseudo-anime characters. Oh, wait, did that sound bitter?