In 2001, it was a fruitful "Year of Japanese Animation Films".
Miyazaki's [Spirited Away] swept through the Thousand Armies;
Toshi's [Millennium Actress] intertwines legends between the real and the unreal;
There is also Watanabe Shinichiro's famous work "Star Cowboy" released this year in the theater version [Gate of Heaven].
[Millennium Actress] and [Gates of Heaven]
Then there is the third part of the Oshii Mori [Mobile Police] series [Waste No. 13] that premiered at the Japanese Science Fiction Film Festival.
It can be said that the styles are different, a hundred flowers bloom, and it is not lively.
It was also in this year that there was a classic that is often overlooked.
Osamu Tezuka × Katsuhiro Otomo × Hayataro – the gathering of the "Three Holy Bodies".
Osamu Tezuka: Known as "Japan's greatest manga artist", his masterpiece "Astro Boy";
Katsuyo Otomo: Animation director obsessed with robots, masterpiece "Akira";
- Hayashi Taro Tezuka's former assistant, Japanese animation director, directed [Galaxy Railway 999]
Inspired by [Metropolis] in 1927, Osamu Tezuka's original manga and katsuyo Otomo's script.
In the 2020 special edition of the famous British film magazine "Sight & Listen", the "50 Best Japanese Animation".
It was the only representative work among the best works in 2001.
This anime is [Metropolis].
It's been 20 years since the film was released.
Many people are still thinking about this "childhood memory".
However, even today, the 20th anniversary of the release of [Metropolis], I watched it for the first time.
Its epic cosmopolitan spectacle, a mix of retro-futurism, cyberpunk and film noir;
The visual and auditory combinations of the jazz soundtrack and Katsuyo Otomo's typical destructive aesthetics, as well as the beauty of the robot beautiful girl like a stop-motion oil painting.
It will continue to shock people, sigh a sentence extraordinary charming!
On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the film will be released in Taiwan. We only have envy
A metropolis of visual wonders
[Metropolis] is the typical dystopian worldview.
In the world of the future, robots have taken on a lot of work in place of humans.
But robot labor does not bring human liberation, but a deeper class contradiction -
"Robots have been a bit too arrogant lately."
"But without robots, our future economy is also worrying."
"The problem is to resolve the dispute between robots and human labor."
At the gathering of the upper echelons of the Metropolis at the beginning of the movie, celebrities hold wine glasses and talk.
Outside, fireworks exploded and airships flew by.
People shouted loudly and worshipped "Cheers for Ziguri (Tower of Babylon!) Cheers to the Metropolis! ”
The lower level of the prosperous metropolis is the underground world of different divisions.
Robots perform their duties and activities in the underground world, and once they cross the line, they will be killed and recycled by soldiers.
The underworld also houses low-level laborers who have been robbed of their jobs by robots.
Their lives are difficult and a new revolution is brewing.
Under the undercurrent of high prosperity on the surface, the male protagonist Kenichi and his uncle detective come to the metropolis to investigate the case and arrest a person.
At this time, he meets Tima, a robot girl who has escaped from the laboratory fire.
None of them knew that Tima would be the key to the fate of the Met.
She is the "masterpiece" of Duke Red, the de facto ruler of the Metropolis. It was he who built the computer weapons he used to rule the world.
However, due to the private pursuit of Duke Reid's adopted son Locke, Duke Reed thought that Tima had been destroyed in the fire.
Only Locke is still persistently tracking down Timma.
Kenichi and Timma flee the underworld when they encounter the underclassmen who are brewing revolutions.
And she also gradually developed human feelings in the process of getting along with Kenichi.
Looking back 20 years from now, maybe the [Metropolis] story isn't new anymore.
But the visual spectacle of the Met is still otherworldly.
The high prosperity that begins with the fireworks of the golden age:
A macroscopic display of the towering metropolitan complex:
Prosperous transportation and above-ground life:
There are also spectacles that no one can surprise everywhere:
The machine that created the sunspot conspiracy is launched:
If you say, the metropolitan earth world is dominated by relatively cold styles and tones.
That underground world, with different partitions, the style design is also different.
The first district is dominated by red, green and yellow, and extremely visual warm colors.
Vibrant, full of infinite vitality.
Entering the second district, you will come to a violent city like [Blade Runner] or [Clockwork Orange].
The whole world is shrouded in a dark green smell of crime.
The third area is full of garbage disposal and rust smells, and is dominated by dark red and black.
Tima, who runs between different divisions and different shades, is full of light.
He contributed "god-class paintings" with wonderful colors like the Italian Renaissance.
Based on New York and Manhattan, it is based on retro-futurism, cyberpunk, and steampunk styles.
Touichi Hirata, who had served as the art supervisor of [Ghost in the Shell] and [Mobile Police], was invited to do the scene design.
It took five years to produce, 140,000 hand-drawn drawings, and more than 1 billion yen of production costs.
The visual spectacle of [Metropolis] is still difficult for animation to easily surpass.
The metropolis of Katsuyo Otomo
The 2001 animated version of [Metropolis] is a wonderful synthesis—
Silent film returns, Tezuka's painting style, the story of Katsuyo Otomo.
It is the product of a combination of strong and powerful, and a variety of thinking.
It was adapted from the original manga by Osamu Tezuka; the inspiration for the Tezuka manga was fritz Lang's Metropolis in 1927; and the script by Katsuyo Otomo.
All are big guys, and each name is taken out to make people kneel.
There is no doubt that it first inherited a lot of the legacy of silent films [Metropolis].
The empty towers of the Tower of Babel, visualizing classes through urban stratification;
The image of the female robot Timma corresponds to the mechanical girl Maria in the silent film.
There is also an adventure plot derived from Osamu Tezuka's manga -
The "cat and mouse game" between the two protagonists and the villains completely made the feeling of a film noir.
But more importantly, this [Metropolis] is definitely Katsuyo Otomo's "Metropolis".
"A boy with extraordinary abilities stands on the ruins of Tokyo, and everyone will say that this is Katsuyo Otomo."
Speaking of Katsuyo Otomo, Hayao Miyazaki's widely circulated comment is enough to accurately summarize.
Katsuyo Otomo is obsessed with the theme of "destruction".
[Akira] started by bombing Tokyo. After everyone tossed around, Tokyo was blown up again.
[Steam Boy] said london, you don't want to stay out of the matter, being bombed is the established fate of Katsuyo Otomo.
Therefore, when it comes to the destruction of such a super-megacity as [Metropolis], how can people not expect it and soar with blood?
Katsuhiro Otomo "magically changed" Tezuka's manga.
In the 1940s, Osamu Tezuka, known as the "god of manga", was invited to create an SF science fiction work.
Just then, he saw the classic poster of the silent [Metropolitan] mechanical girl.
Thus, the comic of the same name inspired by this was born (but it is said that he has not seen the movie).
Metropolis is one of the early SF science fiction trilogies of Tezuka's manga career. But conscience says that the quality is not high.
Scattered and thin story lines, routine adventure sections, shallow themes.
It can't be said to be exactly the same as the 2001 version of the movie we saw, at least not very relevant.
But for director Hayataro's generation, the Metropolis comic is a fond memory of youth.
Therefore, when he had the opportunity to put this work on the screen, he and Katsuyo Otomo hit it off.
One does the director. One writes a script. Just do it.
Katsuyo Otomo almost reconstructed the story. There are some from the original manga, some from the silent films, and some from Katsuyo Otomo's favorite.
So this version of [metropolis] is like some kind of continuation of [Akira].
Humans create "super gods" – the former is the divine power Akira; the latter is the artificial man Timma.
He also self-destructed under the power of the "super god".
[Akira] is a world of high-rise buildings, technologically advanced but also dilapidated new Tokyo.
The government used the "Akira" program to do body experiments.
Street rebellions are rife, riots are rife, and meaningless young people are trying to establish a new order with violence and struggle.
But the so-called hopeful revolution of young people is simply a "victim" used by opposition party politicians.
Beneath the apparent prosperity of [the Metropolis], it is even more filthy and dilapidated.
The underworld laborers, who are huddled in the underworld, claim to take back their jobs from the robots, threatening that "the people who destroyed the tower this time will be us, not the gods."
In the blink of an eye, it was on the verge of breaking through the snow.
Robot workers adhere to the "three laws of robots" and work diligently to engage in dangerous and heavy work.
They are hunted by soldiers without a word, and hunted by robot-hating humans.
The Duke created the "superhuman" Tima in a vain attempt to rule the world.
Not surprisingly, superpowers spiral out of control, bringing about the apocalyptic collapse of the Tower of Babel metropolis.
Destroy the world!
There's a line in [Akira] that says:
"Even if the amoeba is given human power, it will not build houses and bridges, it will only swallow everything around it."
Superpowers never bring new life, but self-destruction.
Katsuyo Otomo is really a super romantic "saboteur"!
The Tower of Babel is destroyed, the world begins to collapse, and in this devastating climactic moment, Ray Charles's classic jazz "I Can't Stop Loving You" sounds...
Such a pure visual feast and sensory aesthetics.
Who would have thought that it came from 20 years ago.