Ranked #2279

Roujin Z

Roujin Z is a futuristic, satirically funny, morality tale written by the reknowned Otomo Katsuhiro, more well known for the classic manga and anime Akira. The movie was directed by Kitakubo Hiryuki (Blood: The Last Vampire, Black Magic M-66), and received a great degree of critical acclaim, partly because it was written by Otomo Katsuhiro, but mainly because it was a movie that showed how anime was able to deal with themes that conventional filmmakers would find extremely difficult to cope with, especially given the time of it's release.

The story is set in the 21st century, and opens with the alarming news that there are too many old people in the world. Now, as everyone knows, healthcare is always a hot topic in political circles, and Roujin Z is no exception. The story in Roujin Z is satirical in the main, but it has disturbing echoes in the real world. The medical students in Roujin Z consider Geriatric care to be a career deadend, something that is also widely believed in the real world, and because of this, funding is provided for the development of the ultimate in geriatric care - the Z-001 "Superbed".

The Z-001 is designed to provide the patient with everything that they need, including home entertainment, baths, massages, attending to bathroom functions, performing diagnoses (and administering medication), etc, etc. The machine is powered by a mini atomic reactor, and is designed to function autonomously in the event of power shortages. The Z-001 is viewed as the future of geriatric care, and as a godsend to the young doctors and nurses and much of the populace, all of whom are unaware of the somewhat sinister nature behind the design of the Z-001.

Another aspect of the story is the inclusion of the Japanese belief that spirits can exist in any object, something which becomes a major theme later on in the movie.

The art and animation in the movie aren't really anything special. Generally the production is sturdy and well animated, but there is nothing really spectacular about it. The sound is equally well done, yet nothing special. My only gripe is that, with the english dub, the dialogue between the VAs tended to vary too much in style, intonation, and accent, from one person to another. Although the english dub is definitely watchable, I prefer the japanese dub on the whole.

There aren't many real characters in this story. The main two charcters are Takazawa Kujiro, the dying old man who is chosen as the test patient for the Z-001 prototype, and his nurse Haruko, who is against the idea of machines taking care of humans, especially her patients. Add to these two a mixture of police, scientists, politicians, military types, and student nurses.

Although the two main characters get much of the screen time, the real star of the show (in both the japanese and the english dub), is the Z-001 (if I explain more it would spoil the show).

Roujin Z is a bit of an odd movie on the whole, but an enjoyable one nonetheless. The movie itself addresses a theme that is becoming more and more relevant in the world, especially as people are now living longer than ever before. The fact that politicians and scientists come up with a method of geriatric care that has all the warmth and empathy of a thrown knife is a central part of the film, as is the callous disregard given to those people who allowed us to get where we are today.

This movie would appeal to many fans of many different genres, most especially fans of sci fi or black comedies. The film is darkly satirical from beginning to end, and is surprising in how openly it attacks the idea that simply caring for the body is caring for the patient.

Roujin Z - odd, satirical, enjoyable, and strangely enough, more relevant now than when it was first released. read more

A mesh of interesting ideas that held quite a lot of promise. The film's creators tried to bite more than they could chew though. "Roujin Z" is a pretty cluttered mess. At first you'd think it is a clever hard science fiction film, then it takes the direction of slapstick comedy. At one moment the film tries to show some witty satire, and in the next moment it's all about forced melodrama. You can say parts of it are about civic duty, while others are just an example of shoehorned (one sided) romance. This film attempts so many things with its story but doesn't really go through to the end with any of them. It's like an undecided child who starts playing with one toy, quickly becomes bored of it and gets another toy, and so on until their room is a mess... than their parent tells them to clean up and the child just grabs everything and stuffs it in a box. Now, considering the films main narrative - that of an advanced robotic caregiver for the elderly that as the story progresses becomes, as a lot of robot films go, more intelligent and self-aware, absorbing electronics and machinery into itself and growing bigger Katamari Damacy style - this clutter in the narrative may well be intentional... a motif? Maybe, maybe not... I think I'm looking too hard into some things here. The result wasn't that good either way.

The film's animation is pretty good. The first few scenes at least, are great: filled with highly detailed backgrounds, nice angles and pretty fluid animation. As the film progresses though, the visual quality begins to slowly drop, the animators cutting corners more and more. Obviously a means to an end, seeing as no work (or at least most works) has (don't have) an unlimited budget. Luckily, ignoring its ups and downs, "Roujin Z" still maintains a relatively high visual quality throughout, at least for its time. But it looks pretty good even now after two decades. I liked the character designs for most of the characters. Some are drawn in a very deformed comical style though... and that didn't fit in all the scenes. This being another thing tied up with the fact that the film goes through so many different routes, but takes no actually successful turns.

The sound is severely lacking. As good as the voice acting was for the most part, the fact that the characters' voices aren't well synchronized with the animation was very jarring. And this goes beyond the occasional slipup where a character's voice is heard before its lips begin to move. There are quite a few disparate cases where characters talk but no mouth movement is animated, or where you can see a character "talking" but they're "accidentally" muted. You could say this is both a sound and an animation flaw, but it's actually a poor choice in sound production. The sound was recorded after the animation was made. Even putting this animation-sound sync problem aside, the sound isn't that good. The soundtrack was incredibly bland and the background music wasn't always used with much effect. The foley and background noises aren't that well done either.

Going back to the film's plot, the start as I said, was pretty promising. It begins with an interesting take on a social problem that will become more and more of an issue - an aging population. Who will take care of the elderly? How will we support them? And so on. But all these things are immediately brushed over to the side to make room for other matters, and there are a lot of misplaced comedic moments throughout the film. The transition from the more serious moments to those that are there just to make the viewer laugh is always abrupt, which simply ruins your immersion. The characters aren't that good either. The main character for example, Haruko (the nurse), has inane motivations for doing whatever it is that she is doing during the film. I think the main reason she is in there is to show us her thighs. She is the nurse-with-nice-legs character. I'm going on a little hyperbole here but there are so many things that felt out of place in this film that they could've added extraterrestrials invading earth to the plot... and this event wouldn't stand out among the rest.

"Roujin Z" in a nutshell - a mediocre film that could've been a lot more. A lot more. read more