Metropolis (Japanese title Metoroporisu - well okay it’s not in Japanese characters, but it’s the best I can do here…), based on the comic by Osamu Tezuka, is an ambitious anime set in future world where technology and money are separating people - even those who live close to each other. So, much like today then. The difference is that this is a time of robots and artificial life forms that are coming close to rival humans in terms of intelligence and even, perhaps, individuality. With a megalomaniac Duke intent on world domination, his trigger-happy adopted son dead set against androids getting above their station, and a disappearance being investigated by a detective from outside Metropolis, and a President who is about to find that he can’t trust his own side, there are several plots vying for our attention in this movie. Reminiscent in some ways of recent movies such as The Matrix and I, Robot, it doesn’t fully develop each one but it’s more interesting because so much is going on at the same time. It’s occasionally difficult to follow exactly what’s going on, sometimes due to the completing plotlines but more frequently due to the idiomatic style of the movie. Still, generally it’s quite obvious what’s happening, though not necessarily quite as clear why it’s happening.
With such an ambitious scale of storyline the execution needs to be spot on for it to work, and to me that wasn’t quite the case with Metropolis. It sometimes seemed a little too wrapped up in the grandiose surroundings to concentrate on telling the story, and despite the complexity, key plot points were a little too obvious. (The ending is a very noticeable exception to this - I had no idea it was going to end up the way it did.) Like one of its characters, it seems a little too focused on killing things, though that’s part of the social comment I think it was trying to make. (Then again I could be completely wrong!) All in all, the story was interesting but perhaps not all that interestingly told.
Metropolis is certainly an aesthetically impressive film. It combined CGI technology with traditional anime - using computer generated backgrounds with the foregrounds and characters hand-drawn. It has to be said that the backgrounds often look fantastic. The characters were also well drawn and well animated. However the combination of the two didn’t always work too well - mostly it was fine, but in some scenes the combination of 3D backgrounds and 2D characters made the people look rather flat. As far as I know this is a relatively recently introduced technique, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it didn’t work 100%. The action scenes were usually good, though the slow-motion scenes tended to look rather daft to me. But as I’ve said many times before, maybe I’m just old and cynical!
Which reminds me of another problem I had with the film as far as believability goes - in this hi-tech world there are no cellphones - or indeed any portable communication devices! Being a little hard to believe aside, if they had but had a mobile phone then several scenes would have been completely different. As is was, characters had to run back to HQ every five minutes, leaving their commrades to face certain death... I have to admit I found that aspect rather odd and not very well thought-through.
The characters are an interesting bunch -ranging from the tyrannical Duke to the violent young man (“Rock”), to investigator Shunsaku Ban (who my wife thought resembled Colombo!) and his nephew Kenichi (who reminded her of TinTin), the characters are all rather extreme. The voice acting for the English version (sorry, I’m just not keen on subtitles!) was okay - it neither impressed nor disappointed me. The star of the show was Tima - an android who has a great (or not) destiny that will be thrust upon her whether she wants it or not… and will she ever realise / believe that she isn’t a human?
Overall, Metropolis was an interesting anime but it just didn’t quite work for me - possibly my least favourite anime to date, and the only one so far I don’t really feel I can recommend. Though I’ve only seen the first two episodes of Animatrix, I feel that fans of that are the most likely people to enjoy Metropolis as well.
As a side-note, if you’re a fan of Director Rintaro’s work, you might be pleased to find out that the DVD release (in the UK anyway) is a 2-disc package with more extra features than you could shake a stick at, even if you have a really big stick. I’ve not specifically reviewed the DVD package as a whole since I’m not really interested in watching the extras myself, but they look like they're good ones if you like that sort of thing.
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