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Watched Steamboy two weekends ago, for those of you who don't know about it it's the new movie by Katsuhiro Otomo, same guy who illustrated the comic book Akira, and later adapted it to film.
This is only Otomo's third feature length directorial project since he first brought his distinct graphic style to film with Akira in 1988. Prior to that he had been a professional mangaka since around the early-mid seventies. In the manga industry Otomo established himself with his groundbreaking sense of print storytelling in a number of short works - most notably Domu (available in English from Dark Horse comics in trade paperback form), for which he won the Science Fiction Grand Prix, a prize traditionally awarded to narrative literature - that eventually lead into his most famous work in 1982, when he started serializing the Akira manga in Young Magazine.
I'd say besides Akira (movie and comic) and Domu, the best Otomo stuff that's been released in english are his contributions to the anthology films Neo Tokyo and Memories, and a rare british collection of manga short stories (also titled Memories).
I have to say Steamboy has a heavy burden in dwelling in the shadow of a movie like Akira. My first impression was that it was kind of disappointing, but the more I think about it I think it's kind of growing on me and I'd definitely like to see it again. The style and setting are "steam-punk" (sounds really dumb) - which I think is partly derived from the reimagined 19th century technology of the 80s series, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water (which itself was derivative of Miyazaki's Laputa).
Actually the main premises behind this bear a striking resemblance to that early Gainax series. In stead of Paris, the young hero (named Ray Steam - wonder what he would have been named if his family worked on internal combustion engines instead) is a Londoner, but the era and anachronistic technology are similar. More importantly they share the same basic plot device: a powerful new technology, sought after by greedy thugs. In Nadia it was a flying rock, this time it's a strange Ball that emits a powerful blast of super-compressed steam by turning a valve.
Consistent with most anime, Steamboy has a fairly convoluted roster of characters and can get very talky and heavy-handed with it's attempts at philosophizing (questions about humanistic "progress", technophiles vs. technophobes etc.), which one feels are half-hearted. A lot of the settings and themes in Steamboy show real promise, but unfortunately it never really develops as science fiction (for lack of any real explanation or understanding of the basic underlying technology - we know it runs on steam, but where does all that steam come from in the first place?).
One complaint I've heard a lot (and this for Akira too) is that the characters all lack depth, but I think that misses the point. As with Otomo's other films, and with his comics, Steamboy is primarilly a visceral experience. To some extent I think the lack of psychology indicates laziness - particularly in one crane-operating villian, who seem to act inexplicably against self-preservation instinct, with no apparent motivation save for his role as a bad guy.
But more often than not, the inertia of these characters works with the formless narrative rather than against it. I would describe them as likeably amoral.
I get the sense that Steamboy, like Akira, exists only to satisfy the excesses of Otomo's imagination, not because he has a worldview or personal story that he wants to get across. As with that earlier film the real power of this lies in the aesthetic, the arrangement and layering of images, frantic pacing - deliberately intensified by the discontinuous shots and jerky character animation - and the unexpected flourishes, as when a massive floating castle suddenly transforms itself in a throwback to the opening sequence from Robot Carnival.
I'm also happy to say that in terms of motion, Steamboy has embraced new technology while at the same time evoking a pleasantly anachronistic, rough-edged style. To fully appreciate the level of detail in this film I think you'll have to see it on a big screen - there are sweeping shots of the teeming London landscape and birds eye views with possibly hundreds of points of animation, as well as some fantastic "camera" movement, but the characters always fit in seamlessly with the background (unlike in the clumsy cg effects of Metropolis).
My one minor complaint about Steamboy's esthetic is the unmemorable, washed out color pallet. It does give the setting a certain sense of openness, but I can't help feeling a little disappointed after the strong use of vibrant, but limited complementary palletes in self-contained shots from Akira and The Order to Stop Construction. A bigger problem is the score, which is the epitomy of orchestral blandness and cheesy fanfare.
I'm not sure how to rank Steamboy. As a story I think it's at best irrelevant, at worst disingenuous, but it's also striking and uniquely cinematic, and I think it's already penetrated my imagination to some extent. It's definitely worth seeing for yourself.
This is only Otomo's third feature length directorial project since he first brought his distinct graphic style to film with Akira in 1988. Prior to that he had been a professional mangaka since around the early-mid seventies. In the manga industry Otomo established himself with his groundbreaking sense of print storytelling in a number of short works - most notably Domu (available in English from Dark Horse comics in trade paperback form), for which he won the Science Fiction Grand Prix, a prize traditionally awarded to narrative literature - that eventually lead into his most famous work in 1982, when he started serializing the Akira manga in Young Magazine.
I'd say besides Akira (movie and comic) and Domu, the best Otomo stuff that's been released in english are his contributions to the anthology films Neo Tokyo and Memories, and a rare british collection of manga short stories (also titled Memories).
I have to say Steamboy has a heavy burden in dwelling in the shadow of a movie like Akira. My first impression was that it was kind of disappointing, but the more I think about it I think it's kind of growing on me and I'd definitely like to see it again. The style and setting are "steam-punk" (sounds really dumb) - which I think is partly derived from the reimagined 19th century technology of the 80s series, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water (which itself was derivative of Miyazaki's Laputa).
Actually the main premises behind this bear a striking resemblance to that early Gainax series. In stead of Paris, the young hero (named Ray Steam - wonder what he would have been named if his family worked on internal combustion engines instead) is a Londoner, but the era and anachronistic technology are similar. More importantly they share the same basic plot device: a powerful new technology, sought after by greedy thugs. In Nadia it was a flying rock, this time it's a strange Ball that emits a powerful blast of super-compressed steam by turning a valve.
Consistent with most anime, Steamboy has a fairly convoluted roster of characters and can get very talky and heavy-handed with it's attempts at philosophizing (questions about humanistic "progress", technophiles vs. technophobes etc.), which one feels are half-hearted. A lot of the settings and themes in Steamboy show real promise, but unfortunately it never really develops as science fiction (for lack of any real explanation or understanding of the basic underlying technology - we know it runs on steam, but where does all that steam come from in the first place?).
One complaint I've heard a lot (and this for Akira too) is that the characters all lack depth, but I think that misses the point. As with Otomo's other films, and with his comics, Steamboy is primarilly a visceral experience. To some extent I think the lack of psychology indicates laziness - particularly in one crane-operating villian, who seem to act inexplicably against self-preservation instinct, with no apparent motivation save for his role as a bad guy.
But more often than not, the inertia of these characters works with the formless narrative rather than against it. I would describe them as likeably amoral.
I get the sense that Steamboy, like Akira, exists only to satisfy the excesses of Otomo's imagination, not because he has a worldview or personal story that he wants to get across. As with that earlier film the real power of this lies in the aesthetic, the arrangement and layering of images, frantic pacing - deliberately intensified by the discontinuous shots and jerky character animation - and the unexpected flourishes, as when a massive floating castle suddenly transforms itself in a throwback to the opening sequence from Robot Carnival.
I'm also happy to say that in terms of motion, Steamboy has embraced new technology while at the same time evoking a pleasantly anachronistic, rough-edged style. To fully appreciate the level of detail in this film I think you'll have to see it on a big screen - there are sweeping shots of the teeming London landscape and birds eye views with possibly hundreds of points of animation, as well as some fantastic "camera" movement, but the characters always fit in seamlessly with the background (unlike in the clumsy cg effects of Metropolis).
My one minor complaint about Steamboy's esthetic is the unmemorable, washed out color pallet. It does give the setting a certain sense of openness, but I can't help feeling a little disappointed after the strong use of vibrant, but limited complementary palletes in self-contained shots from Akira and The Order to Stop Construction. A bigger problem is the score, which is the epitomy of orchestral blandness and cheesy fanfare.
I'm not sure how to rank Steamboy. As a story I think it's at best irrelevant, at worst disingenuous, but it's also striking and uniquely cinematic, and I think it's already penetrated my imagination to some extent. It's definitely worth seeing for yourself.
