Steamboy

Saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I swooned with the massive audience in sheer awe at the absolutely astounding masterpiece that Otomo-san has created. 10 years in the making, the visual feast pays off with an incredible bang.

Although not as violent and complex as the powerhouse Akira, Steamboy is a straight-forward sci-fi-action-adventure story set in Victorian London, England that even strangers of the anime genre can follow with ease. I can see this film being another landmark hit in North America that will hopefully draw more people to appreciate anime. When this comes out in 2005, don't miss it for the world!

A lavish anime production that did it mean a new record for the most expensive Japanese animated movie . This is one of the smartest, most overwhelming animations ever . The yarn takes place in an alternative universe , where some modern inventions where never discovered or made available for the advancement of our societies. In the middle of the 19th century, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, the young inventor Ray, raised in a family of scientists, awaits the return of his father and grandfather to America where they continue their research. However, the only news that Ray receives about them is a mysterious metal ball sent by his grandfather. From the moment that comes into his hands, Ray finds himself involved in a world of incredible intrigues , being relentlessly pursued by the the nefarious O'Hara Foundation . As the steam-engine inventor Lloyd Steam and his son Edward discover a pure mineral water source . The axis of the film is a strange ball , in fact, it's an extraordinary ball of steam, the secret key to an incomparable force that various powerful organizations are eager to capture. Ray must discover which of these organizations represents good and which represents evil. Then an experiment goes wrong and a ball-like machine appears from the destruction.

Japanese animation set in 1860s Britain, directed by Katsuhiro Ôtomo one of the masters of the genre , author of the science fiction classic ¨Akira¨. It is a literary playground for non-stop action , nail-biting chases , spectacle , drama , escapism and scientific exploration . But most of all it is fun This movie Steamboy is an excellent Anime, made in the purest catastrophic and futuristic style by the master Otomo with animated scenes in a clear line , containing great spectacularity and a story that combines the past and future common mastery. An interesting an engaging plot about a teen calle Ray who has to choose sides when his father and his grandfather at odds over the progress and meaning of science, Ray must try to determine for himself what he believes in and whom he can trust, as the future lies in his young hands. As the boy inventor finds himself caught in the middle of a deadly conflict over a revolutionary advance in steam power. There're also historical characters as Robert Stephenson who was the son of George Stephenson, known as the Father of the Railway , in 1829, they built a locomotive "Rocket" in the Rainhill Trials and won and Robert built lots of steam locomotives in England. ¨Steamboy" is definitely a perfect example of Steampunk fiction sub-genre , as it takes a historical setting : Industrial Revolution, and adding the element of Sci-fi super science and whose main representation was ¨April and the Extraordinary World¨ by Christian Desmares, Franck Ekinci based on Jaques Tati's drawings , the latter creator of the imaginative stories of Adèle Blanc-Sec .

Lavishly financed by Production companies Production I. G. and Sunrise , being efficiently directed by master animator Katsuhiro Ôtomo (Akira, Memories ,Mushishi , World Apartment Horror, Spriggan, Robot Carnival) who used one hundred ninety thousand individual drawings . It had a budget of 22 million dollars, being the most expensive Japanese animation production up to that time. Steamboy won the animation award at the Sitges Festival 2004 . Rating : 7/10 . Better than average . Well woorth seeing.

Admiring the gadgets, machines and all the insanely gorgeous animation you won't have enough time to wonder where the plot or character development went.

Steamboy is set in Victorian England, the age of inventions and the industrial revolution. Dr. Steam has developed a ball that contains an enormous amount of pressure, that can be used to power huge amounts of steam machines. However, Dr. Steam's son and grandson both have their own designs...

I've never been a huge anime fan, but I've enjoyed every film I've seen that Otomo has been involved in, and this one is no exception to the rule. Since I enjoyed it as a non-anime fan, I recommend to all others like me who are curious about anime.

The latest film from the director of Akira, Katsuhiro Ôtomo, is a pacy thriller anime set in an alternate 1850s London, in the middle of the industrial age. Rai Steam is the third in a line of engineer inventors who dreams of going to the first ever Great Exhibition – when his grandfather unexpectedly returns from the United States with an new invention, the steamball. About the size of a bowling ball, the steamball is a source of immense, self-renewing power and the people who funded the invention want it back at any price. Rai escapes on his steam-powered unicycle, and the race is on. On the way, he encounters a steam-powered cyborg, a giant steam-powered "Death Star" and a feisty, economic rationalist sidekick, the Gone With The Wind-inspired Miss Scarlett (Manami Konishi).

While the plot is nothing new – and very much in the Hollywood thriller style, the inventiveness of the world Steamboy is set in is exhilarating. Imagine steam-powered individual submarines, flying machines and more, all drawn in painstaking detail – with thousands of cogs and wheels all impacting on each other. Although some CGI is used, most of the film's made in the traditional anime style – around 180 000 individual pictures were used to make Steamboy, and it shows.

Steamboy's a rip-roaring 'steampunk' piece of entertainment, complete with an insane despot who plans to take over the world. Although it's strange to see a film set in London where all the (Anglo) characters are speaking Japanese, it's best not to take Steamboy too seriously. Comic relief is provided by Miss Scarlett and Rai's grandfather, Loyd Steam (Katsuo Nakamura). Loyd Steam also speaks for the natural order, something that's often found in Japanese anime and was inspired by both the animist former national religion, Shinto, and the WWII atomic bombings. Unlike Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, however, it's barely touched on here. Steamboy succeeds because of the fantastic imagination behind the animation, not for its philosophy. ***½/***** stars.

Steamboy has such a rare quality of production values that it almost merits a viewing for the aesthetics alone. But there is a story to the film; and although the hardcore fans of Otomo may have been expecting something a little deeper, and although the pacing and characterization is notably flawed, it still stands as an extremely fun yarn with no shortage of what you'd expect from a classic action/adventure flick. The film, in many respects, is comparable to works like Sky Captain and the Indiana Jones films; a classic storytelling style somewhat augmented for a modern audience.

Numerous characters such as Scarlett and the henchmen are essentially devoid of anything resembling development. Scarlett in particular seems to have had her personal developments skipped or accelerated just to give a comic or emotional foil to Ray and the others, and it sticks out noticeably. She's given the typical "redeeming moment" at the end of the film that has no real grounding or weight considering her screen presence; it comes and goes without making a single ripple in an audience.

Essentially, Steamboy crams too many action set pieces and grand ideas into a story too lightweight to fully support them, and the plot suffers because of it. But it's far from lacking meaning or emotion, so as long as you can detach yourself from expectations you're assured quite a ride.

As a final note, if anyone finds the explicit diatribes concerning science a little distracting, try to keep in mind that they all come from your stereotypical mad scientists types. It becomes somewhat more plausible!