Metropolis
Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis, from 2001, is an anime film based loosely on the manga of the same name. The film, directed by Rintaro, is a colorful and gorgeous piece of animation and a wondrous exercise in style. Its use of music and depth in animation makes it a beautiful piece to look at and listen to. Metropolis uses a blend of old-fashioned animation and music with modern technology, a glimpse at a potential future and deeply detailed backgrounds to convey the focus of the future as envisioned by the creators.
The manga was only indirectly influenced by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a pre-WWII epic. Tezuka claimed to have not even seen the film when he was working on his manga, but rather said he was inspired by a poster of the film from 1927. At first, Tezuka did not want his manga to be made into a feature film because he considered it to be one of his lesser works. Still, once it was created as a feature film, more elements from Lang’s Metropolis were integrated into the story to make it more feature film ready. The film would adapt a lot of the set designs, for example, from Lang’s vision of the future in order to create a feel that reminds audiences of Blade Runner and other futuristic epics.
With this foundation in mind, Metropolis gets set to take us on a journey through intricate plot developments and interesting characters. The film sets up a class division-type story that was largely missing from the manga, using a robots vs. humans theme to drive the central action involving a created “superhuman” girl that falls into different situations and, effectively, falls in love. Metropolis examines the relationship between robots and their masters, as characters are introduced to have a broad variety of sensibilities about other robots. Some hunt robots that end up out of their “zones”, while others protect robots and see them as equals. The parallels are obvious.
The film was released in 2001 in Japan, but didn’t hit US markets until January of 2002. Metropolis actually was the first anime film to be aired on the UK’s Channel 4 in its entirety since the mid-90, which is quite an achievement in its own right. It is truly a film that has it all: tragic anti-heroes, a Japanese private detective, a young sidekick, a villain and plutocrat, a mad scientist and a young beautiful girl that ends up being the reason for everything. These futuristic elements are fused with a classical jazz soundtrack that includes Ray Charles and other standard tunes, working over the film’s backdrop with a intriguing feel. The film’s end action sequence, ripe with explosions, is tempered with “I Can’t Stop Loving You” by Ray Charles.
Metropolis is a gorgeous and richly textured film with an interesting animation style and a brilliant use of jazz music and deep backgrounds that temper the often hyperbolic character drawings. It is an exercise in style that is backed by an intricate plot that draws on the very basics in sci-fi and adventure. The characters are crisp, the dialogue is decent enough and the film carries itself very well. Metropolis is an anime film that is well worth a look, even for those that aren’t too familiar with Japanese animation.
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