Metropolis

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, Robotic Angel

Japanese: メトロポリス

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: May 26, 2001

Producers: Bandai Visual, Dentsu, Kadokawa Shoten, Imagica, Tezuka Productions, Toho, King Records

Licensors: Sony Pictures Entertainment, Mill Creek Entertainment

Studios: Madhouse

Source: Manga

Genres: Adventure, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

Theme: Detective

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 1 hr. 49 min.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.52¹ (scored by 42,733 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1661²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1910

Members: 101,160

Favorites: 591

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Synopsis

In the great city of Metropolis, severe community structures and prejudice dominate a world where humans and robots live together. Unrest and violence increase with each new day.

Searching for the scientist Dr. Laughton, suspected to violate human rights by trading organs, the Japanese detective Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi arrive at Metropolis. In the scientist's laboratory, Kenichi discovers a girl without any memory of her past life. He decides to help her, so they run away together. His uncle follows him and penetrates the dark secrets of the city to find Duke Red, the man ruling from the shadows. Meanwhile, Kenichi desperately tries to protect the mysterious girl from the people hunting her. However, Duke Red and his adoptive son have their own deep reasons for chasing the girl. These reasons are connected to her true identity and the struggle for the domination of Metropolis...

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:

Metropolis

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Tima

Main

Imoto, Yuka
Japanese

Holmes, Rock

Main

Okada, Kouki
Japanese

Hige Oyaji

Main

Tomita, Kousei
Japanese

Shikishima, Kenichi

Main

Kobayashi, Kei
Japanese

Fifi

Supporting

Aikawa, Rikako
Japanese

Ham Egg

Supporting

Ebara, Masashi
Japanese

Lamp, Acetylene

Supporting

Chiba, Shigeru
Japanese

Red, Duke

Supporting

Ishida, Tarou
Japanese

Foodstand Vendor

Supporting

Emmy

Supporting

Koyama, Mami
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maseba, Yutaka

Producer

Rintarou

Director, Planning

Mima, Masafumi

Sound Director

Otomo, Katsuhiro

Script

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Opening Theme

"Metropolis" by Toshiyuki Honda

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Ending Theme

"There'll Never Be Goodbye" by Minako 'Mooki' Obata

More reviews

Reviews

Nov 5, 2012

5camp

Mixed Feelings

Metropolis is…a silent film from 1927 by the German director Fritz Lang. It’s set in a dystopian future where some naive teenager tries to overcome the class system to pursue love.

Metropolis is…a manga written in 1949 by Osamu Tezuka. Its similarities to the original film are pretty limited, mainly because Tezuka hadn’t even seen the film when he wrote the manga. He’d only seen a single picture in a magazine and thought it looked pretty rad.

Metropolis is…an anime movie from 2001 that’s loosely based on Tezuka’s manga, but also tries to bring in some plot elements from the original movie. It had an all-star team ... on it, such as Rintaro the director, one of my all time favourite anime folks Katsuhiro Otomo doing the scripts, and the production being done at Madhouse.

Metropolis is…not very good.

I feel a bit awkward not liking Metropolis, because there’s a hell of a lot of things to like about it. For one, it’s fucking gorgeous. Incredible detail has gone into each background drawing and there is rarely a shot where characters aren’t moving. Even background characters are doing little things like picking up bottles and throwing coins and puffing cigars. It seems weird to highlight something like this, but when you spend all your time watching the usual cost-cutting techniques of anime produced for television, it really stands out here. The music is fantastic too. It’s very blues orientated, which ties into the seedy underworld feel the lower levels of this heavily class-based world have.

The movie clearly has an actual point to the story too. It’s about class warfare and how the lowest levels of society will rise up eventually. It’s particularly striking how the rebellion starts with the second class citizens throwing their little fight, but the real rebellion is right at the end when the robots all rise up under their ‘charismatic’ leader. Tie this is with government corruption and how the desires of those in power, as heartfelt and real those feelings might be, can lead to the destruction of their city. There’s some pretty obvious allusions to the Tower of Babel too and the danger of trying to become like a god. In other words, this movie is not like the other 2000-era movie with Katsuhiro Otomo on board, Steamboy. With Steamboy, all the pretty visuals in the world couldn’t hide that the story was a total damp squib with dumb idealism and pathetic characters mwahaha go my biased views go. With Metropolis, there’s clearly an artistic vision here and a story with proper depth.

So why am I not feeling all that hyped about Metropolis? This might be a bit harder to explain.

You know that thing I was praising earlier on in this review? How characters would always be moving, including the background characters? How detailed the background art was? The movie also seemed to realise how great it was at this and leant on it too much. You get a lot of scenes of one character walking, another character walking with him, the second character looking back and slowing down, then jogging to catch back up with the character they were walking with. There’s lots of scenes of characters walking through the streets, or robots doing busywork, or fat Tezuka designs smoking cigars. It’s all set-dressing to develop the world, but most of it is redundant. When I say ‘a lot of scenes’, I really mean it. At least half of the first hour of the movie was spent on these shots of ‘world-building’. They get very boring very fast, which also serves to give the movie a painfully slow plodding pace.

The story is told almost entirely through symbolism and representative actions, which I generally like. That’s how I normally feel a story should be told. Thing is, this leaves the characters with rather little to say, but speak they do anyway. This leaves them with nothing of interest to say beyond idle chit chat, which leads me to the obvious conclusion that every single one is a boring person. Occasionally they might say something of interest that ties into the overall themes of the movie, but because the animation has been diligently working that point constantly, it’s again pretty redundant stuff. Combine these non-characters with a story that takes forever to move anywhere and has very little of excitement occurring and you get what makes Metropolis such a drag.

I knew writing this review would be difficult. Reading back over the last 2 paragraphs now, a lot of the things I appear to be complaining about are aspects of other anime I love. The whole thing about characters not being people but merely ideals slotted into the story might as well be a line from a review of Madoka Magica. Letting the visuals tell the story and leaving the characters to just blabber on about whatever could be a line from a review of FLCL. So what is it that this movie is missing? Some kind of X factor? Some oomph to get me invested?

Perhaps the best course of action might be to look at the end of the movie and see what it did right. For all the plodding most of the movie did, the end really ramps up and provides some of the most striking imagery I’ve seen in any anime. Absolutely jaw-dropping, end-of-the-world events centring on what had previously been this figure of purity and idealism warp into a mutant-baby-from-Akira monstrosity, but still had parts of its original face intact to make the shock turn even more grotesque and eerie. That scene had oomph, but it also wouldn’t have worked if the proceeding 90 minutes of rather boring studge hadn’t existed to build up the themes in the first place. It’s one of those cases where some reviewers would claim you require ‘patience’, which is a nice way of saying that the piece suffers from an inability to make its world-building and set up interesting to watch and only becomes interesting once Shit Starts Getting Real.

When Shit Starts Getting Real in Metropolis, it’s an exhilarating experience that brings together the narrative arcs of several plot threads in one satisfying conclusion. It’s a shame that they couldn’t make the entire rest of the movie interesting rather than relying on high production values and hoping that alone will keep you entertained.

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Jun 18, 2009

artwithjustin

Recommended

Madhouse Studios you’ve done it again. This art studio’s art always amazes me. For this movie they use a mix a cells and digital that looks drop dead gorgeous. There is a lot attention to detail and also very colorful. Must say, I love Mr. Tezuakes character designs.

This film is adaptation of one of Mr. Tezuaka’s earlier sci-fi work (before Astro Boy) Metropolis. There are some great interviews with the director talking about Mr. Tezuaka on the feature disc.

The music for this movie is awesome, does a good job of setting the mood, while also being diverse and enjoyable. One of my favorite songs ...

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Jul 17, 2014

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Let me take a moment to talk about Metropolis. Metropolis was one of the most notable pioneering sci-fi works released back in 1927. It was directed by Fritz Lang and written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. The film is a classic of the genre, in spite of some scenes being lost, and every sci-fi fan should watch it. Why do I bring this up when it has nothing to do with anime? Well, back in 1949 Tezuka Osamu, who you may know as the creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, made a manga inspired by the film, also titled Metropolis. ...

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Poll: Metropolis Episode 1 Discussion Naruleach - Aug 1, 2009	42 replies	by ErenYeager_69 »» Apr 5, 12:34 AM
I use to think the climax of this film was a dream I had ChristmasCookies - Aug 16, 2016	2 replies	by SliverDio »» Dec 4, 2022 10:09 AM
How much Steampunk, how much Cyberpunk? ukonkivi - Dec 13, 2009	5 replies	by asei »» Jun 16, 2022 2:33 AM
its a good one...too. kisami - Dec 19, 2008	5 replies	by BohemianRhapsody »» Oct 26, 2015 11:07 AM
German 1927 Silent Film Pierre_Bezukhov - Sep 1, 2009	5 replies	by CynicalXperiment »» Mar 16, 2014 12:24 AM

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