Metropolis

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. ... In 2001, Madhouse and Tezuka Productions came out with an anime film version. Which is what we're looking at today.

Story:

The narrative opens in the titular Metropolis with a celebration for the opening of the new Ziggurat. Our protagonists are the private investigator, Shunsaku Ban and his nephew, Kenichi. They've traveled to Metropolis to find and arrest a Doctor guilty of harvesting human organs. Little do ther realise that he's working with the great aristocrat, Duke Red, to create a specialised robot for a specific purpose. They find the doctor's laboratory burning and Kenichi gets separated from his uncle and stuck in a lower part of the city with the robot, Tima.

The story doesn't have a bad premise, even though it's not the one from the original silent film or even close to it. But it quickly becomes riddled with problems. A big one is the romance they have between Tima and Kenichi. It's incredibly weak with the two characters showing no chemistry nor sharing any substantial moments. They meet and they're amicable towards each other so it must be love, I guess. The biggest one is probably Duke Red's ultimate scheme. It reads like a bad silver age comic plot, but without the glorious cheesiness that made silver age comics entertaining. Instead, the film plays it completely seriously. The pacing is all over the place, with some scenes dragging and others getting rushed through.

Characters:

The characters are severely under-developed. Most of them fill a basic archetypal role and never move beyond that. Which is a real problem when they try to get you to sympathise with them. Something bad happened to that guy with three or four lines? Yeah, if you don't flesh out your characters, we aren't going to care. The big exceptions are the characters with even less personality. Tima moves well below under-developed and is just very flat and primarily serves the purpose of being obsessive about Kenichi with little if any personality or motivation beyond him. Yes, the 1927 film was somehow more progressive in terms of gender portrayals than the 2001 one. There are other characters like that, mostly ones who appear in only a few scenes, though. Tima is the only major character with that particular problem.

Art:

The artwork is by far the best part of the film. The characters are done in a kind of retro design style reminiscent of other anime based on Tezuka's work. Which does work very well given the source material. The backgrounds are magnificent. The futuristic tech is really cool looking, although some of it seems like it was deliberately designed around looking cool while being grossly impractical. The fire fighting equipment in particular involves a bunch of small parts that all have to converge and fuse into the main device. It does look cool, but it makes the world seem kind of stupid.

Sound:

The voice acting is mostly pretty competent. The actors all do their work well enough. The big exception is Imoto Yuka who can't be asked to emote and gives a very monotone performance. It may be a matter of direction, but I haven't heard her in anything else, this film was the only acting credit I could find for her, so it's possible that the direction was fine and she was just bad. The music is really good.

Ho-yay:

There really isn't any in this. 1/10.

Final Thoughts:

This movie is not good but I would hesitate to call it ungood. Visually, it's a real treat. The music is good and the acting is, mostly, okay. That being said, it has a lot of problems. The story is weak. The characters are bland at best. It's a film that's flashy but lacking in any real substance. You might want to give it a watch if you're really into high quality animation and sci-fi, but if you're going to want a compelling narrative with interesting characters you'll want to skip it. As such, I can't recommend it for most people. Although you should definitely watch the silent film that it's very loosely based on. My final rating is going to be a 4/10. Tomorrow, we'll leap to something else. Possibly involving time travel.

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 a movie doing everything wrong. And I am not talking about the production values, which are great by the way. I am referring to the aesthetics, a complete mess of ideas and sceneries that strike a chord in all the wrong places and moments. It could definitely be a fine title, if it was aware of the way it presented itself. It could be great if it was:
1) a series instead of a movie. It has a very heavy on themes story yet only movie-worth of duration to show them. This obviously takes away a lot from what it could have been if ... more time was invested in each of its numerous aspects.
2) a lot more character-centric instead of story-centric. You are not made to believe that any one of its characters has the tiniest control over their actions. They are more like being pulled through events set in stone they can’t do anything about. There is also very little time invested one each one of them to feel like they are at least trying to do something significant in general. This tends to make the cast unsympathetic and even useless.
3) closer to the expectations of the era it came out. Its art-style is way too retro to appeal to the modern audience. Its themes have also been analyzed much better in older shows and movies to appeal to an older audience.
4) not feeling like a loose remake of the famous homonymous movie from 1927. Those who have seen it will most likely hate how they turned a live action to an animated feature with blobby characters.

So, why they made this movie then? I suspect just for the nostalgia factor. It is based on a manga by the late Osamu Tezuka (inspired by but not based on the homonymous movie classic), so it would feel nice to the people who grew up with his works. It is also a retro-styled movie which will appeal to all those who grew up with cartoons and anime from the 50’s. So as you can tell, it aims at a very narrowed audience, since most of them would by now be either dead or not interested in cartoons for decades. As for the rest who would really sit down to watch it for old times sake, I am not sure they would appreciate how it combined the old style with modern computer generated images.

Thus not even nostalgia will work. You get this obsolete-looking (in style) movie, showing a hundred events, each one not lasting more than a few minutes, and everything feeling like a dried up patchwork of sci-fi ideas you have already seen and analyzed much better elsewhere. How could it possibly work compared to Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner? How can these blobs of characters possibly make you feel anything?

And skip all that; let’s just suppose we are to criticize the events of the movie based on context and not proper duration or presentation, and without comparing them to any earlier works of fiction. They still suck in reasoning. Here, let me tell you why.
1) Workers take up arms to drive away the robots who steal their jobs. It’s as if the robots are to blame for everything when in reality it was man himself who created them to be so damn loyal and efficient. So instead of attacking the root of the problem (the people creating them or making money from them) they just randomly attack the symptoms (poor robots just doing what they were told). And even if that is supposed to be showing the folly of man, as he directs his frustration towards the wrong issues, it still makes no sense as these workers end up being eliminated by said robots. This renders all this aspect of the movie as completely useless, since not only they attacked the wrong people (or in this case, robots), they also didn’t manage to accomplish anything.
2) A detective and his nephew come to the city to investigate a case. Trust me when I say they didn’t do much of an investigation, as the robot girl was found by complete accident and the man responsible simply revealed himself. Another useless part of the film.
3) The big boss of the city wants to create a robot that will apathetically control all other machines of the world, and for that he asks to resemble a dead girl with feelings? This makes no sense.
4) What would the bib boss’ son would gain by sabotaging the whole project? He would definitely not make his father to like him more. Thus not even he makes any sense.
5) What is the detective boy’s role in the film? To look all cute and innocent next to the robot girl? He didn’t offer anything other than being dragged from one scene to another.
6) Why would we consider the robot girl to be a tragic character? It is a robot that hardly does anything in the whole film.
7) Why did everything go to hell in the end anyway? It is never explained.

So no, it is not a good film. Not by miles.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 7/10
General Artwork 2/2 (nicely done)
Character Figures 1/2 (blobs)
Backgrounds 2/2 (nicely done)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 6/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 1/2 (slow)
Complexity 2/2 (rich in context)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 1/2 (messy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 4/10
Presence 0/2 (very weak)
Personality 1/2 (generic)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (too boring to rewatch)
Memorability 1/4 (aside from nostalgia, no reason to remember it)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 2/10
Nice visuals but that is all.

VERDICT: 4.5/10

When I heard that Metropolis was a really good movie from reviewers, I had to pick it up at the library and try it. Highly disappointed I found it to be extremely boring.

The story revolves around a city named Metropolis, a city filled with creation, structure, and many action. There is one scientist named Dr. Laughton, a Japanese detective named Shunsaku and his nephew Kenicihi. Soon, they arrive at Metropolis and the scientist (I guess or whatshisface) creates a robotic girl named Tima. Kenicichi befriends this girl and decides to help her through the dangers of the city.

Since I'm a child, ... I couldn't really understand this movie. It didn't have enough action in it as I thought it would, but many adventures and suspense. The movie did have a tearful ending and some interesting scenes, but that still didn't enthuse me.

The art and animation style didn't bother me too much; it was beautiful. Much like a Hayou Miyazaki film such as Spirited Away or Cowboy Bebop The Movie or anything that was made in 2001 with the same art style. I loved how this film was drawn and the characters too (even though they're a little smaller than I expected). The animation was also beautiful as well as the art style.

The dub I guess wasn't too bad. Reminded me of some of the Fullmetal Alchemist actors who dubbed their characters (if they're in this film) and some of them sound like the ones from the Lupin III franchise. The little boy was very cute as well as the little girl and the scientist did well with his voice.

The characters weren't too bad. Very imaginative and the kids were very cute, but sadly, I didn't have much enthusiasm with them as I thought I would; but they seem very connected to this movie.

I didn't really enjoy this movie. Although, like I said, the animation/art/dub/characters didn't bother me too much so I guess I can't hate the movie, but it's just something that didn't really interest me as well as other movies out there in the world.

The movie was a HUGE disappointment compared to all the other 2001 movies I've seen which were FANTASTIC but this one has to be the worst out of them. The movie put me half to sleep and I didn't really focus on it too much, it just made me almost turn the television off and watch a different anime. But I had to watch it so that I could review this, sorry.

Overall: 4/10

Finally completed, this awful abomination. Rintaro strikes again (first neo tokyo, then final fantasy and now this shit.) He has no idea that movie should be presentable to audience. It looks awful shit and painful to watch. I actually had to watch it 3 times just so that I could wouldn't get distracted by his presentation and focus my eyes and brain of the story.

This movie biggest problem is the "viewpoint". whenever there is character interaction or speech, normally anime are supposed to show character's face at close up view. but this this movie does the opposite. There are 3 ways this movie sets the ... viewpoint during speeches or interaction-

- Far view point (almost 40%)
basically shows a large area like airport or party hall from the farthest view. Multiple characters are present in a single frame and each character has there own motion. Plus due to the far view all character are so small. I (as in my eyes) has to identify which character is speaking the lines which can be heard in the movie and its really strainfull work for my eyes. Excessive animation for unnecessary parts, absence of focus, jarring atmosphere created due to combination of all this is really distracting.

- Detailed scenery without showing the character (30- 20%)
Rintaro likes to flaunt his background designs a lot. It would not be a problem normally, but he is purposefully doing it when a character starts speaking. That makes me fume in anger. Most of the time after the dialogue has ended or is about to end is when the microscopic sized character enters the scenery frame which is shown. This just shows how much he doesn't care about the story which is going on and he wanted to do is show off he movie's artistic detailed skills.
But is those details even good? No, in terms of looks those details are horrible. Just because he can make a detailed artwork doesn't mean its supposed to look good.
(Have ur teacher even scolded u in school to leave lines while writing and improve ur handwriting because u make a mess in the notebook with details which teacher is unable to read? Its basically the same.)
His films heavy detailing doesn't look neat. U can compare steamboy and metropolis side by side, to identify when heavy details look good and when heavy details look bad.

-Character back is shown (around 20%)
many of the times during the rare close up scene, we are supposed to see character's back while they are talking instead of there faces. Why??? Why would u want me to hit u so badly?

Only around 5-10% time of character speech, character faces are shown. like during each speech or interaction, 1 or 2 sec cameo of their faces just to rub salt in our faces.

Other problems with this movie ( ofcourse the problem won't stop at that)
- tezuka character designs looks out of place from the movie setting and detailed background (its like mickey mouse walking in live action avatar)
- also what with scene transition which looks cartoonish ( reminds me of looney tones hole or MS PowerPoint transitions). I know its rintaro's signature style, but he should realize by now he artwork and those transitions are like water and oil which don't mix.
-his storytelling is also pretty shit if u ask me. the sunspot came out of nowhere in the film, never really explained properly. By the first half, all the side characters either died or are out of picture. It look not so good to me. I have not read tezuka original work, i don't know how it went in it. But based on just wiki knowledge, their are many thing which appears to be missing or are poorly done in this movie

Overall If I consider only story then maybe its a 6/10. But because how excruciatingly painful rintaro direction was I will give it 3/10. Only thing I really liked about this movie was the tezuko character design or music. Story appears decent, nothing that special. characters also appeared fine, but i am not really sure. It will take a somewhat decent adaptation judge character fairly. Everything else was goddamn dreadful.

This is my first movie which I have dropped in between watching because it was painful to eyes.(I have watched more than 200 anime movies if u check my animelist, and the only one came close to dropping was darkside blue or neotokyo. but this is on another level)
I cannot believe this horrible thing was made is 2001. Truly, a remnant of 90s horror.
My advice to anyone is don't be fooled by masochist who consider it good.

WHOOOOO BOY

The fancy CGI, the main selling point of Metropolis is terrible.
The best shots are the ones where there are no humans because all the humans look hilariously awful. Everyone is drawn like a mutant Stretch Armstrong accept for Kenichi who looks an awful lot like Astro Boy.


The story is deeply unoriginal.
The worst use of the tower of Babel myth I've ever seen, mixed in with dozens of other cliches, the Naive super weapon robot child, robots as a metaphor for classism or some other ism whatever is in vogue, at least 15 fake out deaths mostly of the same handful of characters.

Metropolis ... never gives its character's a single second to breathe, out side of Rock whose at best a tertiary villain I don't know anyone's motives.
Rock's sole character trait is he never got hugged enough as a kid which moves him to do a bunch of random acts of violence that only happen to further the plot and push characters together whenever the story starts lagging.

I think a big cause for all the issues at hand is Metrpolis is itself, deeply unoriginal with no driving thought of its own. The original Metropolis is a 1927 German silent film, then someone made a manga based off a poster for it in 1947, then many years later we got this hot mess. Trying to combine the themes of classism from the 27 original, robots and anime from the 47 manga with its own themes of... robots are good? Bad?

I have no idea what the story is trying to tell because what we really have is three different stories of extremely different tones and meanings all fighting each other.
Like I said its at its best when nothing is happening and you can just soak in the quirky art deco designs.