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Metropolis Exceeds Expectations
| Submitted by: | Zero Omega  |
| Submitted: | Mar 02 2010 01:36 AM |
| Last updated: | Mar 02 2010 01:41 AM |
| Category: | Anime Reviews |
| Title: | Metropolis Exceeds Expectations |
| Series Name: | Metropolis |
| Score: | 8 - Excellent |
| Description: | Metropolis (Anime Movie) Originally Posted by: NewClassic It's not very often that going against the wishing of a creator is a good idea. Biblically speaking, its meant being ejected from paradise or being turned into a pillar of salt. In terms of modern creativity, it usually means something of a creative disaster. Still to this day, the idea of making something against the wishes of the creator seems like it should be fraught with trouble, and should end only in catastrophe. Yet the 2001 film, Metropolis, seems to have managed, despite overwhelming opportunity for failure. Metropolis is an anime movie based loosely off of Osamu Tezuka's manga and a German film of the same name. The reasoning for the terrible flop that this movie should have been is the source material. Tezuka's style is blatantly apparent throughout the film, and is clearly the artistic basis the movie follows. The manga of the same name is an early work, and is admittedly terrible. Excepting the art, there was almost no solidity to the original piece. The story was meandering at best, and almost nonsensical at worst. The theme and morality was uncertain, and was ultimately bad. The film more closely follows the German film's narrative, which is more indicative of a class-struggle between the white-collar workers and the robots that have replaced them. The social hierarchy dispute comes to a head just as a local rich man named Duke Red, having the city's mayor and a large activist party in his pocket, builds a tower known as the Ziggurat. The Ziggurat's function is actually for a more weapons-grade purpose. Secretly, Duke Red hires a known robotics scientist to build a robot that will control the Ziggurat, a "superhuman." Panic ensues when the scientist and factory both go up in flames, the robot secretly escapes, and is found by a Japanese detective and his nephew. The narrative is told through a mixture of CGI backgrounds, Tezuka-inspired characters, and an industrial-style decor. The animation quality is astoundingly smooth, even rivaling Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli in terms of animation quality. The style feels more machinated, lots of hard lines and computer-enhanced color-blends rather than the more hand-drawn feel to other anime movies. Although it seems more impersonal, the quality is so apparent that it's hard not to feel drawn to it, even if it is a little too computerized for its own good. The soundtrack manages to aid this endeavor quite ably, although highly stylized throughout. Almost all of the tracks are swing-jazz style tracks, although very occasionally out of place (style-wise) in the film, the execution is flawless and fits beautifully in a large part of the movie. Bottom Line: Despite the hiccups, the source material, and the too-frequent tone shifts in the film, there's a lot to love from the Metropolis film. Score: Story: 70 / 100 Art: 90 / 100 Music: 90 / 100 Overall: 85 / 100 |
| Cover Art: | Attached thumbnail(s) |
