By Rintaro, 2001.
Starring Yuka Imoto, Kei Kobayashi, Kouki Okada, Jamieson Price.
Rating: 9/10, 6.5/10.
The plot of the Japanese Metropolis is very much like that of the old German one, just shoved around, reassembled, and given, if not more, than a different kind of grandiosity. This works fairly well, because the plots of both are dreamlike fantasies, divorced from the world of rationality, but working on a subliminal, subconscious level. The visual style is the same way: very much like the original, but the underpinnings of German expressionism have been replaced with those of anime.
I would talk about the story, but it really isn’t necessary. Story is unimportant here, to an even greater extent than in the old Metropolis. To the extent, in fact, where it becomes a problem. The whole time I kept wondering, "Is this all there is?" The story does explore the issues of what humanity is and what it needs pretty well, though not in a particularly new way. It does strike pretty deep into the psyche, but in a way that I wouldn’t quite call cheap, but wouldn’t quite call good, either.
Fortunately, I had a lot of wondrousness to distract me from the shortcomings of the story. Rintaro’s animation is gorgeous, combining the best of anime with the best of idiosyncracy and attention to detail. Even greater, if that’s possible, than the animation was the music by Toshiyuki Honda. I’m desparately trying to track down the soundtrack, but have been unable to so far. Honda uses now exuberant jazz, now somber orchestral music, whichever he needs, and the transitions are seemless. Both sorts of music are filtered through the amazing, postmodern Japanese sensibility, that takes what it wants of American and European art forms, makes them bigger and more fun, and keeps on adding stuff; this music doesn’t actually sound much like the Shibuya-Shei music of Pizzicato 5 and Puffy Amiyumi and Fantastic Plastic Machine, but it most definitely comes from the same culture. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard the brash explosion of sound that opens the movie. And I don’t know if Honda was involved in this, but the movie also features a stunningly gorgeous version of the American folk song "St. James Infirmary," with vocals by Atsuki Kimura, which is just as vital to a well-rounded life as the opening jazzy bit.
I have to say, I think that perhaps Honda’s score is a greater artistic acheivement than is Rintaro’s movie. This is not to say that the movie is not worth watching; it most emphatically is. It just left me...a little disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Regardless, I would put this on a required viewing list, if only for the fascination of seeing what it does to the other Metropolis, and for the sheer, unrestrained joy of the music.