Metropolis
Dir: Rintaro
2001
****
Rintaro's Metropolis is a feast for the eyes and a colourful look at a Dystopian future with a long and eclectic list of influences. Based mainly on Osamu Tezuka's 1949 magazine Metropolis (Robotic angel in Germany due to obvious copyright issues) which was in turn influenced by the 1927 film by Fritz Lang (although Tezuka denies this as he says he had only seen one frame of the film before he started writing it). I'm inclined to believe Tezuka, as the similarities are minimal, Tezuka was just as much a science fiction pioneer as any of the greats, the 'King of Manga' as he is often known, wrote this story the same year George Orwell wrote 1984 after all. Rintaro has combined the original noir sci-fi with the classic Manga style of animation and has also added cutting edge CGI. The contrast of simplistic 2D animation and the highly realistic CGI shouldn't work but somehow it does. The characters are a strong mix of colourful robots and peculiar humans and are very much Tezuka's own. The story is strong but a little slow in places like you'd expect from a noir but there are times where is dragged somewhat and became a little confusing. The climactic conclusion more than makes up for it and overall, it is a multi genre extravaganza that is impossible not to love as there really is something for everyone.