Metropolis

"Every epoch dreams its successor." Metropolis is a visually striking film based off of the manga of the same name from 1949, which in turn was inspired by a single frame from the 1927 Fritz Lang movie. This 2001 film feels like it completes the cycle taking the best from both materials and weaving it into a movie exploring pervasive themes of class struggle in a dystopian plutocratic society and expands it to examine the relationship of robots with their human masters. The film removes some elements of the original manga the most notable example is the flying, gender-swapping humanoid Mitchi is removed in favour of Tima, who is permanently female and cannot fly. The portrayal of robots in this film feels very much like it was inspired but the Shinto religion of Japan, as a delineation between the animate and inanimate is clearly present. As Shinto kami can be spirits, humans, objects or in this case, robots. The robots themselves are thankfully portrayed in a favourable view where there is a near equal number of robot and human characters. Taking 5 years to create with animation studio Madhouse at the helm, Director Rintaro brings to life this beautiful mis-mash of 2 different source materials and with a screenplay written by the legendary Katsuhiro Otomo, how can you go wrong? Answer is you don’t and are left with something as visually striking as it is heartbreaking. One of the major highlights for me is the New Orleans-styled jazz soundtrack by Toshiyuki Honda and the almost perfect use of Ray Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You. Overall, Metropolis is a heartwarming tale topped off by breathtaking visuals. "I am who?"

Everything is so detailed and lively.The backgrounds look superb and the character animations look great. Still, I wished the characters had more time to talk to one another given how they're never in the same place longer than a few minutes. I enjoyed the voice acting and the interactions between Kenichi and Tima specifically.I would've liked Rock to bicker with Kenichi given their contrasting views about Tima. In other words, I wish the characters would've been more fleshed out and show the audience how they bounce off one another throughout the course of the movie. It's got lots of social commentary about lower class making a stand and lots of symbolism here and there. The ending had me on the edge of my seat, wondering what'd happen next, and damn. It got me. Even with how intense it was, it did feel rushed and raises questions about how will, if ever can humans continue to live alongside robots. I still enjoyed it overall, would recommend.

A wonderfully beautiful, but terrible adaptation. Given the richness of the source material and the global promotion that ran behind it, "Metropolis" shines as a true disappointment for feature length anime. "Metropolis" was heavily hyped(globally) and anticipated for its time, even being said to be the "heir to AKIRA", and with several large names attached to the production. Upon release it was immediately forgotten and for good reason. No one talks about this movie now, outside of its amazing visuals and flowing animation. While visually stunning, the story and characters are an absolute mess. The ending is so abrupt and over the top without resolving ANY of the dozens of plot threads introduced throughout. Best to enjoy with friends and a six-pack.

Metropolis is an anime movie that started showing in Japan on May 26, 2002. It is loosely based on Osamu Tezuka's manga Metropolis, which itself is inspired by 1927 German silent film of the same name. The movie was produced by studio Madhouse, and it was directed by Rintaro, who's directed things like Galaxy Express 999 movie. The story takes place in the great city of Metropolis, where life is easy and everything is great. Or is it? Beneath a facade of splendor lies dark world of prejudice, unrest, and violence. Because, in the city of Metropolis, humans and robots live together side by side, and robots gets all the bad jobs that no one wants, and are treated as disposible objects. But you've not only got the robots who have it bad. You also have the poor who live in slums. They can not get jobs due to the robots taking the only jobs that normally would be available to them, and they are only alive because they are being kept alive through things like food handouts. On the other end of the spectrum you have people like Duke Red. He's the most popular man in Metropolis who most people want as mayor, but he claim uninterested in politics. However, he has other plans. He's hired a scientist named Dr. Laughton, who's making a robot to sit on the throne of the Siggurat and display "mankinds power" to the rest of the world. However, before Duke Red can get a hold of this robot, Dr. Laughton is killed and his lab burned down, and the robot is nowhere to be found. The most important character in this movie is Tima. Tima is a robot who is made to realize Duke Red's ambitions of spreading "mankinds power" across the entire world. Kenichi is the nephew of Japanese detective Shunsaku Ban who have come to Metropolis in search of Dr. Laughton, who's suspected to violate human rights by trading organs. Kenichi ends up saving Tima from the burning lab of Dr. Laughton, and Kenichi and Tima ends up running around all of Metropolis and witnessing all the horrors of this supposedly great city. Rock is the reason why Kenichi and Tima is running around Metropolis. He opposes Duke Red's plan to use Tima, and is trying to kill Kenichi and Tima. He killed Dr. Laughton and set fire to his lab in an attempt to destroy Tima, but since Kenichi rescued her, Rock now see's it necessary to get rid of Kenichi too. Visually speaking, this movie is kinda strange to me. It's not that it looks bad, just weird. The backgrounds are absolutely fantastic. Metropolis really is great looking, and the way the backgrounds speak volumes of the state of the city without ever saying a word to you is fantastic. But in contrast to that, you have Osamu Tezuka's character designs running around in here. Just personally speaking, I'm not the biggest fan of his designs, so for me it took a bit of getting used to. But not concidering personal opinion here, this movie is very good looking, and of course the animation is up to par as well. The music for this movie was composed by Toshiyuki Honda. He did a really good job on the music in this movie. It saxophone really fits this movie and adds something to almost every scene, yet at the same time, the music has got flair that makes it fun to listen to even by itself. Looking at Metropolis, I see a story of inequality and prejudice as the main focus. We have this great and bustling city where everyone seems to be happy and live great lives, but underneath all of that we see the real problems. We see poor people who are only being kept alive by "good will" as they can't even get a job or anything due to the robots taking all the unwanted jobs. We see that Metropolis is really just a paradise made for the few. And at the top of that paradise we see Duke Red, who is a man who's hunger for greatness and power is more important than anything else. Honestly, this movie was just as good as I was hoping for. That's not to say I think it's without flaws. I feel like the movie gets a bit too focused on Metroplis itself and the main characters. That might sound a bit weird, but like I mentioned earlier on, there is the element of real humans struggling here as well, but they show very little of that throughout the movie, and you don't really get a good idea of just how bad it actually is until the riots start breaking out. Up until that you've mostly been shown what the city is like, and the way the robots are treated through the eyes of our main characters, as well as them trying to figure out who Tima really is since Tima has no memories. I think the movie might have tried to do a bit too much with it's less than 2 hour run. But despite this, I think this movie is still a really good movie and I highly recommend people to check it out if you haven't yet.

Well, for an adaptation of the classic silent movie by Fritz Lang, this movie hit the spot right on. The story, while being way different from the original one, still takes place in the same city but with more mature subjects. The soundtrack and voice acting are great, but not perfect (some voices are a little too quiet). The animation, in one word: gorgeous! Overall, if I had to compare these two versions, both are worthy of deserving a gold medal, but personally I would give it to the 1927 version. Why? Because I re-saw this movie in concert in a cathedral two years ago with an organ improvising on this marvel, and boy was it transcendent! Now that doesn't mean the anime version of 2001 is inferior: both version are good in many aspects, it's just that my heart leans toward the 1927 version.

Metropolis displays a fairly standard cyberpunk story mixed with jazz music and has the look and feel of an early 20th century scifi. Story: In an age where robots are omnipresent and discriminated against, a mad scientist creates a new perfect being destinated to rule the world.... *yawns*. The story was simplistic, rushed, highly predictible (I could figure out everything in advance...) and with almost 0 character development. It is also very slow paced and could have fit in half the time. If you want an anime that keeps you on your toes, this is not the one. At least the story makes sense and flows fairly well, so it's watchable. Art: Lots of eye candy which is the main reason I kept watching it to the end. Sound: Well you gotta love jazz, I personnally think the music didnt fit at all. Character: It's very unfocused, does not make me feel they spent a lot of time on character design... Enjoyment: This is very slow paced for no reason at all. Overall: Very underwhelmed for something so highly recommended, I give it a 6/10 just because of the eye candy.

After watching the three movies in the Memories compilation a few years ago, I finally circled back around to Metropolis, which was included as a bundle in the same DVD set. After watching it I can most certainly understand why these works were bundled together as my observations here are much in line with what I remember from Memories. As far as the presentation, while it couldn't pass for something that came out today, it must have looked absolutely out of this world when it came out in 2001. Not so much the foregrounds, but the backgrounds in particular still look absolutely dazzling a decade and a half later and the color palette on offer in addition to the lighting effects and unique, fitting soundtrack come together for an extremely impressive cohesive whole. As with Memories, they clearly put a creative type at the helm, someone who strongly sees anime as an art form, and allowed them to do as they please. I, Robot, originally a 1950 short story compilation by Isaac Asimov and then a crappy film starring Will Smith decades later, is clearly a big influence on this movie and while it's far from a straight up ripoff, the overall premise and events of the story have clear similarities. As a whole, it was a bit tropey and somewhat predictable, but not to the point where I knew exactly what was going to happen or how things would end. Nevertheless, other than the setting and the way it's presented, no element of Metropolis felt truly original for me. Character development here is pretty minimal and the story as a whole is likely the overall weakest part of this package. The pacing felt a bit lopsided for me, with the early and middle sections feeling merely okay but largely lacking compelling content or standout moments, followed by a strong final act that wrapped things up on a high note. I applaud the ending for not taking the cheap and easy way out and providing an all too cliche everybody wins, everybody lives, we all live happily ever after as if none of this ever happened as so many anime these days tend to do. Ultimately Metropolis ended up being one of those good-ish but not great anime that I wasn't in any way offended by and don't regret watching but it won't be memorable for me and I don't see myself coming back to it any time soon. I'm glad I watched it once and it's time to move on. I would think you, the average reader, would probably feel the same, but you're also not missing out on some kind of masterwork if you decide to give this one a pass. 2001 RATING- Impossible in 2026, but very very lovely to look at! OBJECTIVE RATING- 7.5~ PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 7.5

This movie is a lot like Akira, Except the story makes a lot more sense and is easier to follow. The art style and characters are lot more colorful too. This movie basically felt like Akira: for kids. Even though there's still a pretty heavy tone and a good amount of violence. The actual animations I would say are on par with Akira. But because it was made in 2001 some of the cgi looks funny by modern standards. There were parts where it just looked like sprites dancing on top of a picture of a lego circuit board. To me that's part of it's charm. I can see how other people might call it a negative. This movie isn't really the best at anything but I think it would be enjoyable to a wider audience than most anime. I get kind of a "Treasure Planet" vibe from it, I think they came out around the same time.

This movie holds such a special place in my heart. Just for it's ambience alone, it's already one of my favorites. The old-timey artstyle, beautiful animation, steampunk aesthetic, and jazz music transports me to a different time and space. It brings about the feeling of "nostalgia for a different time you didn't live through" that most media can't get. The story concepts are fantastic, I just wish the film was a bit longer. The first 40 minutes or so are great but the rest really rushes through the whole revolution, Tima getting kidnapped, and rescuing her in a very short amount of time. The ending still brings me to tears but it all could've been a bit better if it was just 30 or so minutes longer. The themes of love and discrimination are well handled and the characters are endearing. the CGI, while I think it enhances the artstyle, I can see that, technically, it's outdated. Please, watch it at least once.

An excellent forward-thinking story from Osamu Tezuka, directed by Rintaro who also did The Dagger of Kamui. Metropolis is super impressive, featuring Ghibli-esque animation and colourful psychedelic backgrounds. Early CG is used for the futuristic mechanical equipment, creating a nice contrast between that and the gorgeous traditional artwork. The inclusion of jazz music throughout is another nice touch. I also appreciate Tezuka’s familiar cast of characters, making it feel that much closer to an Astro Boy story. Metropolis feels timeless, and has a lot to say about technology, race, war, and humanity. Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders

A nice showcase of Tezuka's art style in an animated film. The plot progresses fairly quickly, leading up to the climax. Some of the rooms and animations are very impressive. I distinctly remember the room with the giant robot fish, and the tall escalator some of the rich guys come down. You also get to see some worldbuilding where you see what various robots are being used for and doing. The only bad point about this is it's over too song. The plot builds, the climax happens, and then you're back to square 1 basically. But I guess that's better than taking 23 episodes to do the same thing.