With 2017 still fresh in the box, Anime Abandon dives into the frustratingly flawed Metropolis. New year, same old Sage. See more anime goodness at www.benthesage.com/
I can sort of see where Sage is coming from, but I still love this movie even after he's pointed out all it's flaws. Hell, after watching him excoriate the film all I can think is "Well, if Otomo had been reigned in a little more, then it would've been perfect"
Admittedly I'm biased because I love the movie, but I think you were unnecessarily harsh on some of it. Specifically, some of the questions you demanded answers of, especially relating to character interactions, didn't need explicit answering. After a few views, it became clear to me that Duke Red probably adopted Rock after his daughter died, desperate for an heir or just the end to his grief. But Rock couldn't compare to the idealized memory of the Duke's daughter. He wanted her as perfect as his memories, so he had her built. The whole movie leads up to him literally putting her on a pedestal. Rock's story is incredibly tragic because he looks up to a man who'll never love him, yet he spends his whole life trying nonetheless. He tries everything he can think of, but can't understand that he's competing against perfection. Both men are obsessing over something they can never have, and they don't care who gets hurt because of it. (And seriously? You can't guess why Laughton wants Tima? Either he can't bear to give up his greatest creation, or he wants a loli fuckdoll.) The theme that seems to tie all the threads together seems to be misguided love for distorted ideals. Duke Red loves a dead memory. Rock chases a fathers love that will never happen. Atlas is in love with the romanticized version of a rebellion. Kenichi is one of the few characters whose love is pure: he knows just what Tima is, and doesn't care, because he likes her for her. Also, maybe Ban took Kenichi with him because he has no other family to take care of him. That's simple enough.
I agree so much to your statement. I always thought the story was coherent and to the point. I first seen the film back in my years in junior high and I never got lost with the story. Sage, on the other hand, was being unnecessarily harsh to the narrative of the story and asks himself, "what was the point?" I mean, really? One of the biggest themes was some of the character's different perception of what they see as love is. Duke Red sees Tima as a memory because he lost his daughter. Kenichi sees that differently as he simply likes her for who she truly is. Oh, and Sage saying that Tima died is a fucking lie -- it's obviously implied that Kenichi searches the ruins and discovers a group of robots have salvaged some of Tima's parts in an effort to rebuild her. So, yeah -- she's okay, everyone!
+Cyberwolf087 To be fair, I can see both sides. It did take me several watches to really understand everything. The first time I got the character interactions intuitively. the second time I understood the motivations better. Each time afterwards was just trying to understand the political stuff better, which I admit goes over MY head. Still, there's nothing *wrong* with a movie so big it demands multiple viewings, so long as there's actually depths to discover, and this movie has them. I also strongly get the feeling that Otomo's original script probably would have been five hours long, and so scenes, themes and ideas probably got compressed to the point where they weren't as accessible. Happens a lot when it's writing vs. animation/filming costs. Also to be fair, I have that same copy of the DVD he has, and even though they do imply he tries, that version CUTS OUT the photo of Kenichi & Tima's Robot Repair at the end. Bastards!
Thomas Jenkins I love the it's a manga not a comic screech more because manga literally means comic book same as Bande Desinee it's just a regional style of fucking comic book
its interesting that there is a term "cartoon" in japanese with katakana letters. However, they usually refer it to silly cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Loney Toones etc. They also call manga as comic sometimes.
The funny thing about that, is one of the earliest cartoons, were the illustrations in Punch, a Victorian magazine. During the Meji era, there was a Japanese edition, Japan Punch, the editor, Charles Wirgman, taught Japanese artists western style drawing techniques, in other words, early Manga.
Actually, Kenichi stayed behind to find and rebuild Tima, which he might or might not succeed, signified by a picture at the end credits showing a store named "Kenichi & Tima".
@@JW-do2wc because she connected herself to all the robots in the city mentally. In the aftermath when kenichi is searching for her in the rubble, robots start bringing peices to him and start chanting tima when he asks what is this, so due to the mental connection with tima and the robots kenichi has most of the peices brought to him and with that being said the robots are very helpful because he treats them well. Also, at the end there is a brief scene where you see timas radio in the rubble and it turns on, only to have her speak out of it, "who am i" thus we can infer that her consious survived the fall, and with the robots knowing the peices of tima it would make sense for them to find the radio eventually, and since tima accepted the fact that she was a robot and went full dive into the ziggurat system it would make sense for her to have a extreme level of knowledge on electronics and robotics at least, especially herself since that was one of her motivations of her thoughts of " who am i? " that plagued her when rock started probing the subject. Now that we have established that kenichi has most if not all of timas parts and her intact concious that is capable of communicating via her radio then it very well makes sense that he could put her back together under her instruction, and since they both feel very passionately about the treatment of robots and the amount of time between the fall of the ziggurat and timas revival as inferred by the picture of the shop at the end of the credits (they are both almost as tall as the doorway and front windows of the shop, implying they are either teenagers or adults) decide to set up a robot repair shop to help the robots of the city and treat them as equals. And the combined expertise of tima and kenichi makes for a very plausible and believable reason to do so. Plus they deserve the happiness imo.
5:58 - Duke Red adopted Rock to fill the void left by his daughter's death, but now that he can make a robot in her image, he's pretty much like "I don't need you anymore." 6:52 - "Unnamed private group"? He tells the Supt. he was hired by the International Human Rights Committee and several other human rights groups. (OK, that last bunch was unnamed, but still he gives 1 name at least.) 7:02 - One can infer that Ban and Kenichi have done several cases together, and as you see in the film, Kenichi is capable and can take care of himself. Also, "arguably the protagonist"? Kenichi does a lot to keep Tima safe. During the chase scene, he keeps her from getting shot, takes a bike-chariot thing [if someone knows the proper name please tell me] to escape him, and it works! 9:10 - Laughton wanted to keep Tima because he saw her as his masterpiece. She's the only robot in the film (& I'm sure the world) who looks unmistakably human, and can even feel emotions. Had he managed to escape, he probably would've made Tima his accomplice in future crimes, or at least convince her he's her father (like the manga). 10:48 - When Rock abducts Tima to dissect her, we see a small photo (seen also at 18:44) of Duke Red with a younger Rock. That's a "past connection" if I ever saw one. Also, that "last war" thing was a reference to "Nextworld," another Tezuka manga. In it, Duke Red adopts Rock at the end to make up for the tragedy suffered in the manga. 16:34 - Atlas is from Astro Boy, except here he's human. But yeah, I see the Atlas Shrugged parallel too. 17:25 - That candle was a gag affiliated with that character. Look up the character (Acetylene Lamp) for more info. 20:37 - They establish that Tima will become a weapon once she merges with the throne, losing her emotions and memories in the process. 21:54 - That was how the manga ended. Yeah, I wish she made it too, but hey, it's not my story. 22:00 - Duke Red and his tyranny are gone, a LOT of people survived, and (with Ban) are evacuating. Kenichi stays behind after seeing that Tima's parts are still out there, hoping to rebuild her. Not to say the countless deaths didn't matter, but still, there's a lot more hope in this ending than you'd think, dude. And it doesn't JUST end. We see the radio play Tima's voice, hinting she's still alive. If you don't like Metropolis, that's fine. But if you're gonna do a review, at least do a bit more research.
Crono Though that wouldn't save it from missing major points of the original, and as what it is it still would be disjointed mess. Problem is not lack of development of overcrowd plot-points, but that they never connect on the first place.
"This is the movie equivalent of having William Shakespeare using his most eloquent of prose... To tell a Limerick." Holy hell what a powerful statement. Whoever wrote that, weather it be Sage, The Engineer, or Gabe, bravo. The writing for this show has always been really outstanding, but I was blown away by the sheer weight of that final statement.
I always felt that Metropolis should have been a 13 episode anime because of how many plots it had. Maybe it would have been better then, even if the animation took a hit.
I remember watching this at a young age and being incredibly disturbed and scared by the ending confrontation. Took me years to find out the name of the movie.
same,last time i saw it was atleast 15 years ago and for me the only scene i remembered was the ending, everything about it stuck in my head because how upsetting it made me, i never was able to remember the films name though, i only found out the name today
The thing is that Tezuka himself didn't want an anime adaptation of this because he considered it one of his weaker works so it's only natural that production on an adaptation was started after his death and it shows.
Otomo said in an interview that the only way they could make this movie was becuse Tesuka died, which is a hell of a thing to say. czcams.com/video/8cTjtHvASfE/video.html
Japanese priestess (Miko) being a cliche is because it really is a thing. They're pretty common, and at the bigger shrines they employ a couple dozen of them. For most girls it's just an after school job like waitress or babysitter, except with a slightly more comfortable uniform and a lot less complaining (with the trade-off of having to do a lot of ceremonial stuff and get a liiiiittle too much insight into some peoples' personal lives. When a guy comes in looking for a charm for a healthy relationship, fertility, then finding new love, you can kinda put the pieces together.)
Nature of cliche is that it lost it original point and is used because everyone use it. As such Miko are cliche because in many cases many characters are Miko (because it is cool) despite not having any connection to temples or spirituality in the movie itself. So that definitely is a cliche.
I agree with Sage. The animation of the movie is beautiful, but aside from the last 10 minutes, the film feels like a mess. Also, I feel like the soundtrack in some scenes just wasn't fitting with what was happening, especially in the scene that showed the end of the revolution.
I personally wanted complain also about how this movie miss point of original Metropolis what is a masterpiece, but as it was only loosely inspired and creators never bother to check the source it would be pointless. So yes.. beautiful mess it is.
To be fair, Osamu Tezuka never actually watched Metropolis either. He based the entirety of the manga off the movie poster he saw. Also this is by far not the worse Tezuka-inspired movie of recent years. The Buddha movies are way way worse.
Fucking finally. When i walked into the video store, i watched the final scene play with "i can't stop loving you" covering an array of beautiful. emotionally charged explosions. I wanted to experience this movie so badly Its damn shame that one of the best looking animated movies has been so overlooked and ultimately forgotten for its handful of faults, but thanks Sage for covering it.
"What is the focus of the movie?" I was focusing on all star Tezuka character cameos aside from named characters :-p Plot is just a device to bring them together, who cares if it makes sense or not. Also point of "interest." Rintaro directed Armageddon/Genma Taisen in 1983. He couldn't do full world-wide destruction scene in full animation back then (budget restraint,) and ended up being couple of oil painting type still shots. So destruction scene in Metropolis is his sweet "revenge" for that scene.
The issue with this film at the end of the day is that Rintaro took Fritz Lang's Metropolis (a sci fi film about the wealthy ruler of a city hiring a scientist to build a robot to help him subvert a worker's revolution while a romance happens between his child and one of those self-same workers subverts a violent end) and combined it with Tezuka's Metropolis (a sci fi manga about a wealthy villain with an aim at world domination hiring a scientist to build a synthetic lifeform for him only for the robot to eventually rebel against both the villain and all of humanity only to be destroyed in the end) while also adding his favorite member of the Tezuka Star System Rock Holmes (a gun wielding anti-hero) and tried to make something coherent that contained ALL those story beats. Yeah, it doesn't quite work.
grungehamster Thing is, if you tighten up the script, maybe add an extra half-hour to flesh things out, it could work. Duke Red loses his daughter at a young age and adopts Rock, a war orphan, to fill the gap, but grows to resent the boy because he will never take the place of Red's daughter. Rock grows up wanting love and respect from his father but gets neither. His put in charge of the Marduk organization and filled with Red's propaganda, becoming a True Believer who takes things far more seriously than Red attempted in the hopes that, if he does, his father will love him. Red, an industrialist, is central to the rise of Metropolis as a superpower in the post-war-world, but he is a megalomaniac and comes to believe that he should rule it all. Meanwhile, part of Metropolis' wealth is founded on the increasing use of robots who displace vast numbers of humans who are forced to live in the city's underbelly surviving on odd jobs, handouts, and what they can scrounge. Year-after-year, as robots replace more people, resentment grows. Red taps into this resentment, covertly funding an anti-robot group that polices rogue robots and agitates against Metropolis' government even as Red claims to be a loyalist who works hand-in-hand with the government to build a superweapon. The secret key to this superweapon is Tima, a robot commissioned by Duke Red designed - in a fit of nostalgic sadness - to look like his daughter would have and built by a revolutionary-but-mad cyberneticist; Tima _is_ revolutionary, being much more human than other robots (which explains why Laughton doesn't want to give her up - she's his masterpiece). The Ziggurat was designed to make robots go haywire, allowing Metropolis - which was prepared for the Ziggurat - to turn the world's technology against it. However, given that Duek Red has both made the Ziggurat so that only he can control it through Tima, and subverted the military to his aim, launches a coup on the eve of the weapon's activation, declaring martial law ostensibly to crack down on Atlas' revolution (seriously, Red should be covertly assisting the revolution as well through the Marduk parties' anti-robot, pro-human agitation). The weapon is activated, but thanks to Kenichi interefering with Tima's development, and her own hasty activation, she goes rogue and turns the robots of the world against humans, but steps back thanks to Kenichi as the Ziggurat explodes. Meanwhile, Inspector Ban and Kenichi are the proverbial Right Men in the Right Place, people who aren't really tied into the events going on but act as neutral observers and, ultimately, as people who can throw a wrench into the works. Ban acts as a lens into the more complex issues (alongside his robot sidekick), letting the viewer understand Metropolish politics, while Kenichi provides a view into more personal matters, talking and interacting with common people and revolutionaries. Rock fits in here as well both as the actual face of Red's policies and as a constant antagonist hunting down Tima for reasons of his own and ultimately, in a misguided desire for love and vengeance, destroying Red's plan while his counterpart, Kenichi, saves the day through mercy and compassion.
I remember saving up my monies to buy this movie as a kid. I watched it two or three times in my life. It just never felt complete or compelling to me and I let it fade into the back of my memory. The parts I always remember are simply random. The opening musical montage, which I occasionally will listen to on drives to work. There is a scene with the robot detective Pero or whatever and company investigating a shop. Then the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie. I've gone to the trouble of buying every translation of Tezuka's work, from "Swallowing the World" to "Barbara" (Even paid to be on the creative panel for that one!) and I think it's not the fault of the movie. Most of Tezuka's work is incoherent in a medium that isn't bite-sized like comics. Each individual story comes together over time to form a character telling. The actual plot or outcome of it seems to always get pushed into the background. If you took the comics as a storyboard and tried to make a movie, it would be a complete mess.
Akira, memories, metropolis, steamboy, time and time again, Otomo shows greater interest in films with grand visual spectacle over something compelling. His style over substance approach definitely is a breath of fresh air in todays anime industry, but if he got some fantastic writers together like he did with Magnetic Rose to marry visuals, sound, and story/characters, he could make classics time and time again (other than Akira, which is remembered more so for industry changing visuals rather than a compelling narrative).
Osamu Tezuka was also influenced by the Fleischer brother's Betty boop! Shakespeare DID write limericks! He's on the top 10 list of best limericks ever written! Metropolis was written to be more of a slice of life than a typical 3 act theatre piece. As in real life: -not everything makes sense. -not everything has a point. -very little relates to anything -nothing is resolved and -LIFE GOES ON. Thinking of it THAT WAY... Metropolis is really good!
The biggest weakness I feel the movie has really is its story. It has EVERYTHING else right, but its story is weak. It tells way more than shows, important plot points are either never explained or brought up to be quickly forgotten, and, if you ask me, has way too many characters to focus on. Two prime examples I remember is when the rebellion happens, there is a general who betrays the president and after that has images of war overlapped on him, but he disappears from the movie from then on. The rebellion, also, is shown in the aftermath, and not shown in its destruction, which I feel jips the audience, since this "revolution" was built up from just about the start. But like some other plot threads, its thrown out without after it had finally just started. This movie has far too much telling and not showing and it bothers me. One of the things I would fix is instead of having the Duke go into detail about why he doesn't consider Rock his son, he would just say how hes not, never explain why, and than later on or in snippets of detail mentioned(or shown) by other characters or even revealed by Rock himself that he was adopted in a war. The mystery of a cold relationship between supposed parent and son and the animosity of the "father" helps to create tension and, for the sake of the audience, a mystery that if the audience is buying into the film gets invested in. But, thats just my two cents.
Exactly. More specifically, the individual plot points are great, but mishmashing them all together just ruins it. Any one of these stories could've been coupled well with the Kenichi/Tima story, but instead we've got three or four or five fighting for screentime. As for the revolution hinted at near the beginning, you actually got me thinking of the character of Perro, and how his fate was a missed opportunity. I honestly thought the revolution was going to belong to the robots, as the prior scenes seemed to be going in that direction. But all of a sudden, they give names and voices to Atlas and his crew, for the sole purpose of adding an emotional moment where they kill Perro, and then *bamf* their role is done. What if ROCK was the one who killed him? Wouldn't that have resonated alot more than it being done by some barely established characters who we were supposed to kinda sympathise with?
I love this movie, and I was hoping you would do this one. You're not wrong, but I still can't help but put this in my top 5 favorite (not best) Anime films of all time. Fact is, this is the closest where ever going to come to for a proper Astro-Boy movie... Edit: I also dig the soundtrack, despite the ESL stuff. Addendum to the Edit: I don't mean to be that guy, but you were wrong about the ending. Tima technically doesn't die. The first English release cut out an important part. In the end of the Japanese versions credits there's a photograph of Kenichi, Tima, and Pero running a robot repair shop.
Hey Bennet. I just want to say thank you for uploading videos on about animes that are not commonly known because it's old or it just wasn't mainstream. So many other youtube channels only mentions anime that is commonly known or the anime that was produced in recent years. I'm half-Japanese and most of them I never have watched or heard of those anime the anime fans mention which is pretty weird since I have lived in Japan for most of my life. The animes you mention, Bennet, is pretty well known or heard of amongst my friends. I hope you upload more videos soon because I always come to your channel everydy to see if you have uploaded. Keep up the good work Bennet!
I am hooked from the very MOMENT you mention Osamu Tezuka. XD And dragged into it even further by the mention of Black Jack, my favorite of his work. Now I must watch the rest!
This review kind of demonstrates how nitpicking can ruin something that is overall well made and enjoyable. Sure, a few things about the plot are weird. But the movie has many great moments and visuals. And I would argue having many plot-lines contributes to the feel of a "bustling city that kinda becomes inhumane because of so many things happen in it". In a video essay, I saw the notion of "mood movies", in which the focus is the atmosphere rather than the hyper-efficiency of the plot. And I think Metropolis can be put in this category. Personally, it's one of the anime movies I recommend to non-anime fans that want something else than Ghibli. And it works pretty well as that.
The secretary having a candle over his head is a running gag. Tezuka uses the Star System, meaning he reuses characters in different roles in different stories. The character that was the presidents aide has a notch on the back of his head, and Tezuka has a joke that a candle would stand upright if placed in it. I think that particular character has a candle in a lot of things he has been in.
Randomly thought about this movie today, don’t know why. Decided to look up a video essay. Probably looking at it through nostalgia glasses, but I love it. Is it the greatest ever, would I even recommend it to others, most likely no, but nostalgia isn’t rational. I love this movie, and I’m happy that you talked about it. Several years late, but I hope you have a lovely day and you’re doing well!
The real tragedy of Metropolis is that there's a masterpiece in there somewhere, but it's lost among the tangle of undeveloped plot threads. If they had done a few more rewrites, this could have been lauded alongside classics like Ghost in the Shell and Akira. But they didn't, so it's not.
Happy new year man! (Would love to hear your take on The Sky Crawlers sometime!) Best of health and strength in the new year to you and your family! You all do awesome work! Thank you! -Jarod
Sage nails it here. I was super hyped for this one. Otomo, Rintaro, huge production values. This HAD TO BE a masterpiece. And when you watch it, you just don't feel it. Stuff just happens. There is no story really. You just watch some of the most gorgeously drawn paintings in animation history, with some good animation. And it's actually kinda weird. You sit there, thinking "This looks like the most amazing thing, but I'm not feeling anything. Is there something wrong with me!?"
6:56 If someone is asking "But why the bartender of "Blackjack" appears in Metropolis? Osamu Tezuka always did that, put some characters in different works. For example, you can see to Kimba in a episode of Black Jack.
You know, I have to ask. How much of Tezuka's work is...good? I mean, classics, influential and pioneering in the field I have no doubt but in terms of 'sit down and read/watch it', are they any good?
Sage is on point with this one. I saw this movie when I was in middle school, and just about the only thing I remember about it is the very end scene. It really did tug at the heartstrings, but a lot of the clips of this review may as well have been brand new footage to me, as far as my brain is concerned. Kind of a shame, as the movie is gorgeous.
The "candle on the head" gag was an inside joke; one of Tezuka's childhood friends had an indentation on the back of his head (the result of an injury) that you could balance a candle on, so Tezuka made a recurring character with this feature.
I think they wanted to intergrade the 1920s metropolis and the manga into a condensed story while trying to make commentary about the dangers of too much power, the disconnect between a government and it's people, the working class rising up against oppression, and human identity. The robots a symbol of the working class, temia and kenichi are the witnesses of the destruction war and government control, rock is a weird mash up of the consequences of poor choices and what happens when father's abandon their sons. Just rock alone is worth a look into because of what he represents. He's there in the beginning and seen as mistake for being a poor choice of a son and head of security, he's the cause of the destruction of the city by pursuing kenichi and Tamia because of his wanting to be accepted by the man he sees as his father, I could go on but I feel like his placement in the story is to highlight the bad decisions of the characters and rather than be a full blown protagonist he's more like Frankenstein's monster in the sense that duke made him into what he is just as the scientist made Tamia into the weapon she was and both were a mistake made by men who abused their knowledge and power for their own benefit rather than focusing on the people of the city.
As unfocused and just plain odd that this film is, I still love it as one of my top anime films (that aren't Ghibli anyway). I love the music, I love the ideas, I adore the animation, and I think Tima and Kenichis relationship is just plain adorable, in a very Tintin-meets-Chii kinda way.
Kudos for getting through the entire film - I picked this up when it was first released in the States and was so frustrated with it that I gave up at roughly halfway.
To those of you wondering, Sage is 100% right about the lack of focus. If there is one thing this movie adapted proper from the manga, its the weak characterization and too many characters/plots that drift in and out only to abruptly stop. And it doesn't help that the camera pans out so often to show off its backgrounds, and the characters get lost in it. I first watched this on a old black box TV, and damn if there weren't so many moments I was playing "where's Waldo"
Fun fact, the robot detective originally appeared in an old Astro Boy story from 1961, Hot Dog Corps. In it, his name was Pero, not a robot but actually a dog which had been turned into a humanoid cyborg dubbed #44. It's one of my favorite Astro Boy stories, actually, and worth a read. The design of most of those later trench-coated robot detectives can probably be traced back to this character.
I read "Monster" before i dabbled in Tezuka's oeuvre and boy did I have a lot of "Hey! I know that guy/gal!" moments. Urasawa is probably the most devoted Tezuka disciple alive today.
You know? I can't disagree at all really, All I remember about this movie was characters and drama I didn't feel attached to, the very NOT hollywood approach where he doesn't save the girl and how pretty it all was.
You don't need to defend the movie bro because we're on the same page. The glue that's meant to hold everything together in the movie is the least memorable thing about it. I remember a couple scenes and the visuals well but that's about it
Up until I saw this review, all I could really remember were those final ten minutes. I'd completely forgotten that Rock and that robot detective existed at all. Considering that the backdrop of the robot subjugation, military coup, and an _entire fucking uprising and attempted revolution_ weren't important enough to remember says it all.
Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis is a really frustrating anime movie to watch. I bet if Osamu was still alive and seeing this in theaters, he'll feel ashamed and didn't like it. I would be on his side if he ever said that.
I love this film! I remember seeing it as a kid and couldn't remember the title. It was at the age of 16 that I finally remember the title of this movie. I don't like the character designs as much, but the animation looks so damn smooth and I love the soundtrack. I wouldn't spoil the ending, but I cried.
In the scene where the minister, Lamp, is dying, a candle briefly appears over his head as he falls to the ground. This is a reference to Tezuka's various manga; the same character appears in different roles in several of Tezuka's other stories. It is a running joke (based on his name) that extreme emotion sometimes causes this character to sprout a candle from the back of his head. As for Kenichi he stays behind because wants to create a place where humans and robots can coexist peacefully. He eventually repairs Tima and opens a robot workshop. This was in the film during or at the end of the credits but was supposedly cut from the original english dub of the film.
There are some very good parts to this film as well. For one, as you pointed out, the visual worldbuilding is very nice. Secondly, Rock is actually a menacing villain. I think it's because everytime he shoots his gun, someone or something dies. Not just side pointless one-offs, but actual ones that have precense. The film also deals effectively with dehumanization of the robots. People who like them treat them with condescending attitude, naming them after dogs or treating them like dolls. People who don't like them abuse them with no consequences in actually uncomfortable long shots.
That is basically the same way I felt the first and only time I saw this movie. When it was going to come out, there was such a huge hype, posters, propaganda, comercials, and trailers in vhs' and DVD's. Metropolis was everywhere(as one could say back then), it was considered to be a masterpiece, so me and all my friends where hyped to watch it. We bought it on release,(dont remember if it was VHS or DVD), the entire anime club was present that day for the release and we all came out from it, like....what was it about, or more like, what did we saw? It was a terrible shame, that this movie's plot went to waste, because like you said many times, the animation is beautiful, but without a good plot, or hell an ok story, it went into the abyss of forgotten movies and no one ever talked about it ever again.
Maybe the Iris Wipe is a callback to the early days of film (where the original Metropolis was created). Many of the film-making techniques we take for granted nowadays weren't set in stone at the time, so directors had to improvise. This included editing techniques like this.
I still love this movie, but I can see where you're coming from and you did a good job explaining your problems with it. Strangely enough I was never bothered by the 70% of the things feeling superfluous. This is just a movie I keep coming back to... I don't know why it just does this effect on me. Maybe this is why I love it so much, despite its mostly unfocused story that doesn't give enough weight to the subplots, I still strangely felt invested. Maybe I see the whole film on different lights.
when I was a young child I remember just catching this movie at the end and I just cried, always having it on my mind when I grew up I had to search for it based on the ending alone. Finding out that this is just a mess of a film when I finally watched it. (still in my heart though)
The PI kid character is one of Tezuka's long line of stock characters. In fact, ALL characters there are stock characters, more or less (Duke Red's first appearance is the Metropolis manga). Rock is one of his two kid detective characters, and Rock is the detective character which can also be played as evil.
Whether terribly told or not, ironically this film was actually my gateway into the knowledge of anime and the separation between anime and American cartoons, basically it was the first film that I seen that distinguished the difference of anime and cartoons for me.
the funny thing about the journal is that it's color is the only red in a sea of brown and lighter and mostly darker shades. it's only slightly more subtle than the girl in red in shindler's list, which was already a highlight.
When I rewatched this with my friends we slowly devolved into mad laughter as Rock kept ruining everything in the movie. This movie shall always be remembered by us as "Rock Fucks Up Everything"
its anti capitalist at heart, most wont understand some concepts of how government and capital can ally, so for this guy he had no idea what to do, since he only knows tezukas metropolis, not fritz lang's metropolis, and he misses a very important dialogue that arises, and look hes clearly against che guevara but ignores the main plot.
I think what they were trying to do with Metropolis is that they were trying to tell a mixture of the original Fritz Lang film and the Osamu Tezuka manga, and they just failed at it. They couldn't choose which aspect to be focused on, and it just kind of fell apart. But the climax scene with 'Can't stop loving you' by Ray Charles playing? Makes the movie for me, it is really the best part of the entire film. It gives me the good movie shivers! I can't hate this movie because of it!
I recall hearing on an episode of ANNcast years ago that attempts to have Metropolis adapted were made several times while Tezuka was alive, only for said attempts going nowhere. I suppose since it was one of his earlier works and Tezuka having little faith in it. But it wasn't until after he passed away that Rintaro ultimately ended up having the film made anyway. Always thought that was kinda scummy, if it's true. Did you know about that, Bennett?
I loved Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It's one of my favorite silent films. The anime adaptation would have benefited if it tightened all of its plot strings and focused more on the original story.
It's like they couldn't decide to adapt the manga or remake Metropolis so they opted for both. The crazy scientist that makes an Android. unsatisfied youth joining a rebellion to spite his father. A corrupt political elites running over the enslaved people. That's the Metropolis remake. Just gender swap the rebel leader and don't use the Android as a doppelganger but keep her as the, sort of, love interest. Even the world building has call backs to Metropolis. The directive and his nephew along with the robot ethics, what I assume, are from the manga adaptation. That would probably make the use of the adopted kid as a stand in for the original protagonist. The Nazi references could be a nod to Fritz Lang fleeing pre ww2 Germany, though it plays of as cliche. I agree, the movie needs to pick a plot. Are you a remake or an adaptation? Decide damn it. I liked the film but after seeing the Remastered Original Metropolis, looking back, this movie was fucking terrible. Yet I still like it. Maybe it's the throw back/precursor/being the originator style of the animator and the great wide and panning shots though awkward. Metropolis: Likely awkward.
"The crazy scientist that makes an Android. unsatisfied youth joining a rebellion to spite his father. A corrupt political elites running over the enslaved people. That's the Metropolis remake." No it is not.. core point of Metropolis is dehumanization of the working class and separation from administration by technological barrier. You could practically remove all those elements you mention and it would still be a proper Metropolis movie. This movie simply can't be analyzed by just surface symbolism (what is largely outdated anyway).
I remember seeing this in the early 00s. I was bored silly, and the last 10 mins smacked me out of nowhere! I still don't know how to feel about it as a whole.
As for Dr. Lawton's desire to keep Tima to himself, I always thought it might've been because he felt that she was his greatest accomplishment, and he didn't feel like giving her away.
That, and its a leftover from the manga, where Lawton was actually a decent guy, and instead of handing Tima over to Duke Red (the villian) instead took her in and raised her as his child.
I've read that in the Japanese version, Kenichi stays in Metropolis to rebuild Tima. And apparently there is a deleted scene of a still shot that shows Kenichi somehow not only accomplished this, but they also run their own Robot Repair shop.
All Tezuka characters tend to act simlarly or posses similar abilities regardless of the manga they're in or when it was launched, once they were created and established as distinctive solid characters they weill rettain their abilities that made them famous. This Kenichi is supposed to be Chief Detective Kenichi whom was a child detective that had remarkable abilities to fight crime and criminals always underestimated him because he was a child. Now I know this sounds very wierd but again most of Tezuka's characters were created in the 1940's to early 60's. Back then Gleason Publications had the Little Wise Guys, DC comics had the Boy Commandos. It was just something that was common back in the day.
I first saw Metropolis about 12 years ago. I was visiting a friend who was already watching it and I got to see the last 20 minutes. A girl finds out she's not only not human, but also a weapon, and tries to destroy mankind as her programming asserts itself. Meanwhile, a young boy does everything he can to try and save her, only to watch her die just as she comes to her senses. Then it all ends with Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You" as everything EXPLODES! The animation was beautiful and watching what was left of the film felt enthralling. I wouldn't get a chance to see Metropolis in full for several years, and I think Sage put it aptly; important points don't get the focus they need as the story just meanders along with too many story lines. It's a shame because the ending, to me, hinted at such a more substantial story.
Hoo boy, _The Dark Myth?_ I remember that from the bundle of trailers Manga Entertainment used to stick on every DVD they put out, and each time you saw them you'd think "Yeah... no."
Katsuhiro Otomo has a knack for writing comics, where you can focus on a multitude of characters and ideas for several, SEVERAL pages. However, when going to film, it's like he's trying to write a complex string of stories that try to tie together, but the strings have to be cut into smaller pieces for runtime, and you just end up with a knotty mess. He can write well (like in his graphic novels and short films), but you can tell he was trying to do too much in this film. And no one pulled him aside and told him to reel it in a bit.
I watched this movie when i was a lot younger and i have to admit, i cried a little at the ending scene. I rewatched it recently and... its not as good as i remembered it but i still enjoyed watching it
Atlas is an Astro Boy villain. He is a robot who wants to a the world's strongest robot. Tima is a replacement for Michi, the original character, which Tezuka used for Astro Boy's robot "mother".
As far as I can tell, you haven't reviewed anything by Kosuke Fujishima. This is another man responsible for some really amazing anime, and I'd love to see you cover such classics as Oh! My Goddess! and You're Under Arrest! Please?
And yet, Metropolis remains one me and my brother's favorite anime films of all time. Still enjoy it despite all it's flaws.
me too, i personally cant see where the story was lacking, i was still invested the entire time.
I can sort of see where Sage is coming from, but I still love this movie even after he's pointed out all it's flaws. Hell, after watching him excoriate the film all I can think is "Well, if Otomo had been reigned in a little more, then it would've been perfect"
i feel the same
There is no such thing as a flawless masterpiece
@@Dakotaidk yes, there’s is. Masterpieces CAN have flaws.
Admittedly I'm biased because I love the movie, but I think you were unnecessarily harsh on some of it. Specifically, some of the questions you demanded answers of, especially relating to character interactions, didn't need explicit answering. After a few views, it became clear to me that Duke Red probably adopted Rock after his daughter died, desperate for an heir or just the end to his grief. But Rock couldn't compare to the idealized memory of the Duke's daughter. He wanted her as perfect as his memories, so he had her built. The whole movie leads up to him literally putting her on a pedestal. Rock's story is incredibly tragic because he looks up to a man who'll never love him, yet he spends his whole life trying nonetheless. He tries everything he can think of, but can't understand that he's competing against perfection. Both men are obsessing over something they can never have, and they don't care who gets hurt because of it. (And seriously? You can't guess why Laughton wants Tima? Either he can't bear to give up his greatest creation, or he wants a loli fuckdoll.) The theme that seems to tie all the threads together seems to be misguided love for distorted ideals. Duke Red loves a dead memory. Rock chases a fathers love that will never happen. Atlas is in love with the romanticized version of a rebellion. Kenichi is one of the few characters whose love is pure: he knows just what Tima is, and doesn't care, because he likes her for her.
Also, maybe Ban took Kenichi with him because he has no other family to take care of him. That's simple enough.
I agree so much to your statement. I always thought the story was coherent and to the point. I first seen the film back in my years in junior high and I never got lost with the story. Sage, on the other hand, was being unnecessarily harsh to the narrative of the story and asks himself, "what was the point?" I mean, really? One of the biggest themes was some of the character's different perception of what they see as love is. Duke Red sees Tima as a memory because he lost his daughter. Kenichi sees that differently as he simply likes her for who she truly is.
Oh, and Sage saying that Tima died is a fucking lie -- it's obviously implied that Kenichi searches the ruins and discovers a group of robots have salvaged some of Tima's parts in an effort to rebuild her. So, yeah -- she's okay, everyone!
+Cyberwolf087 To be fair, I can see both sides. It did take me several watches to really understand everything. The first time I got the character interactions intuitively. the second time I understood the motivations better. Each time afterwards was just trying to understand the political stuff better, which I admit goes over MY head. Still, there's nothing *wrong* with a movie so big it demands multiple viewings, so long as there's actually depths to discover, and this movie has them. I also strongly get the feeling that Otomo's original script probably would have been five hours long, and so scenes, themes and ideas probably got compressed to the point where they weren't as accessible. Happens a lot when it's writing vs. animation/filming costs.
Also to be fair, I have that same copy of the DVD he has, and even though they do imply he tries, that version CUTS OUT the photo of Kenichi & Tima's Robot Repair at the end. Bastards!
I think the problem is that these connections aren't clear enough to be understood in a single viewing, which is how most people experience movies
+MayanExpression
That is fair.
If the audience has to come to your conclusion then the movie fails to inform the audience of necessary detail
Nothing beats coming home after a 6 hour trip to a nice warm meal, bed and Anime Abandon. That's the Bennet The Sage difference.
That would be a great add for a B&B
Bad Gengar's Bad Gaming try coming back from working all night
i just finished editing a video and it feels good to take a break and just watch a Sage upload....
Bad Gengar's Bad Gaming lol yep
"it's not a comic, it's a graphic novel!" has now turned into "it's not a cartoon, it's an anime!"
Thomas Jenkins I love the it's a manga not a comic screech more because manga literally means comic book same as Bande Desinee it's just a regional style of fucking comic book
its interesting that there is a term "cartoon" in japanese with katakana letters. However, they usually refer it to silly cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Loney Toones etc.
They also call manga as comic sometimes.
A graphic novel is Something Else you weeaboo
"it's not an anime. It's a motion picture"
The funny thing about that, is one of the earliest cartoons, were the illustrations in Punch, a Victorian magazine. During the Meji era, there was a Japanese edition, Japan Punch, the editor, Charles Wirgman, taught Japanese artists western style drawing techniques, in other words, early Manga.
Actually, Kenichi stayed behind to find and rebuild Tima, which he might or might not succeed, signified by a picture at the end credits showing a store named "Kenichi & Tima".
thank you
Kemal Alis but how does he rebuild her without the full on knowledge of every piece?
I know right that dude just doesn't get it.
I didn't half cry the first time I watched this years ago when Tima dies. I cried again when I rewatched it today.
@@JW-do2wc because she connected herself to all the robots in the city mentally. In the aftermath when kenichi is searching for her in the rubble, robots start bringing peices to him and start chanting tima when he asks what is this, so due to the mental connection with tima and the robots kenichi has most of the peices brought to him and with that being said the robots are very helpful because he treats them well. Also, at the end there is a brief scene where you see timas radio in the rubble and it turns on, only to have her speak out of it, "who am i" thus we can infer that her consious survived the fall, and with the robots knowing the peices of tima it would make sense for them to find the radio eventually, and since tima accepted the fact that she was a robot and went full dive into the ziggurat system it would make sense for her to have a extreme level of knowledge on electronics and robotics at least, especially herself since that was one of her motivations of her thoughts of " who am i? " that plagued her when rock started probing the subject. Now that we have established that kenichi has most if not all of timas parts and her intact concious that is capable of communicating via her radio then it very well makes sense that he could put her back together under her instruction, and since they both feel very passionately about the treatment of robots and the amount of time between the fall of the ziggurat and timas revival as inferred by the picture of the shop at the end of the credits (they are both almost as tall as the doorway and front windows of the shop, implying they are either teenagers or adults) decide to set up a robot repair shop to help the robots of the city and treat them as equals. And the combined expertise of tima and kenichi makes for a very plausible and believable reason to do so. Plus they deserve the happiness imo.
5:58 - Duke Red adopted Rock to fill the void left by his daughter's death, but now that he can make a robot in her image, he's pretty much like "I don't need you anymore."
6:52 - "Unnamed private group"? He tells the Supt. he was hired by the International Human Rights Committee and several other human rights groups. (OK, that last bunch was unnamed, but still he gives 1 name at least.)
7:02 - One can infer that Ban and Kenichi have done several cases together, and as you see in the film, Kenichi is capable and can take care of himself.
Also, "arguably the protagonist"? Kenichi does a lot to keep Tima safe. During the chase scene, he keeps her from getting shot, takes a bike-chariot thing [if someone knows the proper name please tell me] to escape him, and it works!
9:10 - Laughton wanted to keep Tima because he saw her as his masterpiece. She's the only robot in the film (& I'm sure the world) who looks unmistakably human, and can even feel emotions. Had he managed to escape, he probably would've made Tima his accomplice in future crimes, or at least convince her he's her father (like the manga).
10:48 - When Rock abducts Tima to dissect her, we see a small photo (seen also at 18:44) of Duke Red with a younger Rock. That's a "past connection" if I ever saw one.
Also, that "last war" thing was a reference to "Nextworld," another Tezuka manga. In it, Duke Red adopts Rock at the end to make up for the tragedy suffered in the manga.
16:34 - Atlas is from Astro Boy, except here he's human. But yeah, I see the Atlas Shrugged parallel too.
17:25 - That candle was a gag affiliated with that character. Look up the character (Acetylene Lamp) for more info.
20:37 - They establish that Tima will become a weapon once she merges with the throne, losing her emotions and memories in the process.
21:54 - That was how the manga ended. Yeah, I wish she made it too, but hey, it's not my story.
22:00 - Duke Red and his tyranny are gone, a LOT of people survived, and (with Ban) are evacuating. Kenichi stays behind after seeing that Tima's parts are still out there, hoping to rebuild her. Not to say the countless deaths didn't matter, but still, there's a lot more hope in this ending than you'd think, dude.
And it doesn't JUST end. We see the radio play Tima's voice, hinting she's still alive.
If you don't like Metropolis, that's fine. But if you're gonna do a review, at least do a bit more research.
yes! thank you so damn much!
Glad to see some people agree!
Honestly, I still love this movie and to me the best parts are the moments with Kenichi and Tima. Their interactions are so adorable for me.
I like it so much that my Astro Boy oc's name is a combination of Tima and Mina (from Astro's First Love) as a nod to both characters.
ZombiiChixx As flawed as this movie is, I still love it.
What's worse is simply put there was effort into this movie that ended up being either misdirected or unfocused.
Worst is that it is simply too common..
Maybe if this was an anime series, rather than a film, they could've done more or expand on certain plot points.
Crono I wouldn't be surprised if that was the original intention.
he dose his characters like actors I need read that book again
Crono Though that wouldn't save it from missing major points of the original, and as what it is it still would be disjointed mess. Problem is not lack of development of overcrowd plot-points, but that they never connect on the first place.
I'm an easily entertained simple man. Basically the big reason I enjoyed the movie myself, was for sure the visuals and music.
"This is the movie equivalent of having William Shakespeare using his most eloquent of prose... To tell a Limerick."
Holy hell what a powerful statement. Whoever wrote that, weather it be Sage, The Engineer, or Gabe, bravo. The writing for this show has always been really outstanding, but I was blown away by the sheer weight of that final statement.
Famous Draven this is ironic because William Shakespeare was the most prolific limerick writer of all time
Rock? No, with those sunglasses and that red color scheme, we're looking at a Blues here.
I always felt that Metropolis should have been a 13 episode anime because of how many plots it had. Maybe it would have been better then, even if the animation took a hit.
I remember watching this at a young age and being incredibly disturbed and scared by the ending confrontation. Took me years to find out the name of the movie.
Honestly same
same,last time i saw it was atleast 15 years ago and for me the only scene i remembered was the ending, everything about it stuck in my head because how upsetting it made me, i never was able to remember the films name though, i only found out the name today
I laughed when you called him Duke Phillips instead of Duke Red.
"All hail Duke! Duke is life!" (Swallows bird)
"Make him squeal!"
I met the actress who played the android girl, Rebbaca Frostadt, shes really nice
Cool.
even got an autograph from her
The thing is that Tezuka himself didn't want an anime adaptation of this because he considered it one of his weaker works so it's only natural that production on an adaptation was started after his death and it shows.
Otomo said in an interview that the only way they could make this movie was becuse Tesuka died, which is a hell of a thing to say.
czcams.com/video/8cTjtHvASfE/video.html
Japanese priestess (Miko) being a cliche is because it really is a thing. They're pretty common, and at the bigger shrines they employ a couple dozen of them.
For most girls it's just an after school job like waitress or babysitter, except with a slightly more comfortable uniform and a lot less complaining (with the trade-off of having to do a lot of ceremonial stuff and get a liiiiittle too much insight into some peoples' personal lives. When a guy comes in looking for a charm for a healthy relationship, fertility, then finding new love, you can kinda put the pieces together.)
Nature of cliche is that it lost it original point and is used because everyone use it. As such Miko are cliche because in many cases many characters are Miko (because it is cool) despite not having any connection to temples or spirituality in the movie itself. So that definitely is a cliche.
+TheRezro
The cliche is used even when the character is not a Miko, like when portraying nuns.
I agree with Sage. The animation of the movie is beautiful, but aside from the last 10 minutes, the film feels like a mess. Also, I feel like the soundtrack in some scenes just wasn't fitting with what was happening, especially in the scene that showed the end of the revolution.
I personally wanted complain also about how this movie miss point of original Metropolis what is a masterpiece, but as it was only loosely inspired and creators never bother to check the source it would be pointless. So yes.. beautiful mess it is.
TheRezro That song in the end though...gets me every time. :)
To be fair, Osamu Tezuka never actually watched Metropolis either. He based the entirety of the manga off the movie poster he saw. Also this is by far not the worse Tezuka-inspired movie of recent years. The Buddha movies are way way worse.
Hunter Rose What Buddha movies?
Dan Eyal there were a couple of movies made in like 2012 and 2014 iirc based on Buddha by osamu tezuka
Fucking finally. When i walked into the video store, i watched the final scene play with "i can't stop loving you" covering an array of beautiful. emotionally charged explosions.
I wanted to experience this movie so badly
Its damn shame that one of the best looking animated movies has been so overlooked and ultimately forgotten for its handful of faults, but thanks Sage for covering it.
I walked in on the same scene too. Never bothered to watch the film in full. XD
"What is the focus of the movie?"
I was focusing on all star Tezuka character cameos aside from named characters :-p Plot is just a device to bring them together, who cares if it makes sense or not.
Also point of "interest." Rintaro directed Armageddon/Genma Taisen in 1983. He couldn't do full world-wide destruction scene in full animation back then (budget restraint,) and ended up being couple of oil painting type still shots. So destruction scene in Metropolis is his sweet "revenge" for that scene.
The issue with this film at the end of the day is that Rintaro took Fritz Lang's Metropolis (a sci fi film about the wealthy ruler of a city hiring a scientist to build a robot to help him subvert a worker's revolution while a romance happens between his child and one of those self-same workers subverts a violent end) and combined it with Tezuka's Metropolis (a sci fi manga about a wealthy villain with an aim at world domination hiring a scientist to build a synthetic lifeform for him only for the robot to eventually rebel against both the villain and all of humanity only to be destroyed in the end) while also adding his favorite member of the Tezuka Star System Rock Holmes (a gun wielding anti-hero) and tried to make something coherent that contained ALL those story beats. Yeah, it doesn't quite work.
grungehamster Thing is, if you tighten up the script, maybe add an extra half-hour to flesh things out, it could work.
Duke Red loses his daughter at a young age and adopts Rock, a war orphan, to fill the gap, but grows to resent the boy because he will never take the place of Red's daughter. Rock grows up wanting love and respect from his father but gets neither. His put in charge of the Marduk organization and filled with Red's propaganda, becoming a True Believer who takes things far more seriously than Red attempted in the hopes that, if he does, his father will love him.
Red, an industrialist, is central to the rise of Metropolis as a superpower in the post-war-world, but he is a megalomaniac and comes to believe that he should rule it all. Meanwhile, part of Metropolis' wealth is founded on the increasing use of robots who displace vast numbers of humans who are forced to live in the city's underbelly surviving on odd jobs, handouts, and what they can scrounge. Year-after-year, as robots replace more people, resentment grows.
Red taps into this resentment, covertly funding an anti-robot group that polices rogue robots and agitates against Metropolis' government even as Red claims to be a loyalist who works hand-in-hand with the government to build a superweapon. The secret key to this superweapon is Tima, a robot commissioned by Duke Red designed - in a fit of nostalgic sadness - to look like his daughter would have and built by a revolutionary-but-mad cyberneticist; Tima _is_ revolutionary, being much more human than other robots (which explains why Laughton doesn't want to give her up - she's his masterpiece).
The Ziggurat was designed to make robots go haywire, allowing Metropolis - which was prepared for the Ziggurat - to turn the world's technology against it. However, given that Duek Red has both made the Ziggurat so that only he can control it through Tima, and subverted the military to his aim, launches a coup on the eve of the weapon's activation, declaring martial law ostensibly to crack down on Atlas' revolution (seriously, Red should be covertly assisting the revolution as well through the Marduk parties' anti-robot, pro-human agitation). The weapon is activated, but thanks to Kenichi interefering with Tima's development, and her own hasty activation, she goes rogue and turns the robots of the world against humans, but steps back thanks to Kenichi as the Ziggurat explodes.
Meanwhile, Inspector Ban and Kenichi are the proverbial Right Men in the Right Place, people who aren't really tied into the events going on but act as neutral observers and, ultimately, as people who can throw a wrench into the works. Ban acts as a lens into the more complex issues (alongside his robot sidekick), letting the viewer understand Metropolish politics, while Kenichi provides a view into more personal matters, talking and interacting with common people and revolutionaries. Rock fits in here as well both as the actual face of Red's policies and as a constant antagonist hunting down Tima for reasons of his own and ultimately, in a misguided desire for love and vengeance, destroying Red's plan while his counterpart, Kenichi, saves the day through mercy and compassion.
I remember saving up my monies to buy this movie as a kid. I watched it two or three times in my life. It just never felt complete or compelling to me and I let it fade into the back of my memory. The parts I always remember are simply random. The opening musical montage, which I occasionally will listen to on drives to work. There is a scene with the robot detective Pero or whatever and company investigating a shop. Then the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie.
I've gone to the trouble of buying every translation of Tezuka's work, from "Swallowing the World" to "Barbara" (Even paid to be on the creative panel for that one!) and I think it's not the fault of the movie. Most of Tezuka's work is incoherent in a medium that isn't bite-sized like comics. Each individual story comes together over time to form a character telling. The actual plot or outcome of it seems to always get pushed into the background. If you took the comics as a storyboard and tried to make a movie, it would be a complete mess.
I actually like this movie a lot. It's one of my favorite anime films and I got such a big crush on Rock.
Akira, memories, metropolis, steamboy, time and time again, Otomo shows greater interest in films with grand visual spectacle over something compelling. His style over substance approach definitely is a breath of fresh air in todays anime industry, but if he got some fantastic writers together like he did with Magnetic Rose to marry visuals, sound, and story/characters, he could make classics time and time again (other than Akira, which is remembered more so for industry changing visuals rather than a compelling narrative).
Osamu Tezuka was also influenced by the Fleischer brother's Betty boop!
Shakespeare DID write limericks!
He's on the top 10 list of best limericks ever written!
Metropolis was written to be more of a slice of life than a typical 3 act theatre piece.
As in real life:
-not everything makes sense.
-not everything has a point.
-very little relates to anything
-nothing is resolved
and
-LIFE GOES ON.
Thinking of it THAT WAY... Metropolis is really good!
The biggest weakness I feel the movie has really is its story. It has EVERYTHING else right, but its story is weak.
It tells way more than shows, important plot points are either never explained or brought up to be quickly forgotten, and, if you ask me, has way too many characters to focus on.
Two prime examples I remember is when the rebellion happens, there is a general who betrays the president and after that has images of war overlapped on him, but he disappears from the movie from then on. The rebellion, also, is shown in the aftermath, and not shown in its destruction, which I feel jips the audience, since this "revolution" was built up from just about the start. But like some other plot threads, its thrown out without after it had finally just started.
This movie has far too much telling and not showing and it bothers me. One of the things I would fix is instead of having the Duke go into detail about why he doesn't consider Rock his son, he would just say how hes not, never explain why, and than later on or in snippets of detail mentioned(or shown) by other characters or even revealed by Rock himself that he was adopted in a war.
The mystery of a cold relationship between supposed parent and son and the animosity of the "father" helps to create tension and, for the sake of the audience, a mystery that if the audience is buying into the film gets invested in. But, thats just my two cents.
Exactly. More specifically, the individual plot points are great, but mishmashing them all together just ruins it. Any one of these stories could've been coupled well with the Kenichi/Tima story, but instead we've got three or four or five fighting for screentime.
As for the revolution hinted at near the beginning, you actually got me thinking of the character of Perro, and how his fate was a missed opportunity. I honestly thought the revolution was going to belong to the robots, as the prior scenes seemed to be going in that direction. But all of a sudden, they give names and voices to Atlas and his crew, for the sole purpose of adding an emotional moment where they kill Perro, and then *bamf* their role is done.
What if ROCK was the one who killed him? Wouldn't that have resonated alot more than it being done by some barely established characters who we were supposed to kinda sympathise with?
I'm hoping that Bennett with someday review the Black Jack OVAs. (They were dubbed in english, so they qualify!)
I love this movie, and I was hoping you would do this one. You're not wrong, but I still can't help but put this in my top 5 favorite (not best) Anime films of all time. Fact is, this is the closest where ever going to come to for a proper Astro-Boy movie...
Edit: I also dig the soundtrack, despite the ESL stuff.
Addendum to the Edit: I don't mean to be that guy, but you were wrong about the ending. Tima technically doesn't die. The first English release cut out an important part. In the end of the Japanese versions credits there's a photograph of Kenichi, Tima, and Pero running a robot repair shop.
Is it really Godwin's law when the story is actually about fascism?
DeadBoneJones nope Godwin's law doesn't apply in that case
its not really about that, the people have way too many rights.
Pawel MacPoof that is one hell of a statement careful where you take it.
michaelkeha eh?
michaelkeha I think he meant they had way more freedom than the subjects of a fascist regime would.
Hey Bennet. I just want to say thank you for uploading videos on about animes that are not commonly known because it's old or it just wasn't mainstream. So many other youtube channels only mentions anime that is commonly known or the anime that was produced in recent years. I'm half-Japanese and most of them I never have watched or heard of those anime the anime fans mention which is pretty weird since I have lived in Japan for most of my life. The animes you mention, Bennet, is pretty well known or heard of amongst my friends. I hope you upload more videos soon because I always come to your channel everydy to see if you have uploaded. Keep up the good work Bennet!
I am hooked from the very MOMENT you mention Osamu Tezuka. XD And dragged into it even further by the mention of Black Jack, my favorite of his work.
Now I must watch the rest!
Metropolis was one of the first anime movies I saw, and one of the first animes I bought on DVD.
So happy you finally reviewed it :D
This review kind of demonstrates how nitpicking can ruin something that is overall well made and enjoyable.
Sure, a few things about the plot are weird. But the movie has many great moments and visuals. And I would argue having many plot-lines contributes to the feel of a "bustling city that kinda becomes inhumane because of so many things happen in it". In a video essay, I saw the notion of "mood movies", in which the focus is the atmosphere rather than the hyper-efficiency of the plot. And I think Metropolis can be put in this category.
Personally, it's one of the anime movies I recommend to non-anime fans that want something else than Ghibli. And it works pretty well as that.
The secretary having a candle over his head is a running gag. Tezuka uses the Star System, meaning he reuses characters in different roles in different stories. The character that was the presidents aide has a notch on the back of his head, and Tezuka has a joke that a candle would stand upright if placed in it. I think that particular character has a candle in a lot of things he has been in.
Geez Finally, Sage!
Thank you! ♡
I don't care what anyone says, this right here, was the greatest anime feature ever made.
Randomly thought about this movie today, don’t know why. Decided to look up a video essay. Probably looking at it through nostalgia glasses, but I love it. Is it the greatest ever, would I even recommend it to others, most likely no, but nostalgia isn’t rational. I love this movie, and I’m happy that you talked about it. Several years late, but I hope you have a lovely day and you’re doing well!
The real tragedy of Metropolis is that there's a masterpiece in there somewhere, but it's lost among the tangle of undeveloped plot threads. If they had done a few more rewrites, this could have been lauded alongside classics like Ghost in the Shell and Akira. But they didn't, so it's not.
Happy new year man! (Would love to hear your take on The Sky Crawlers sometime!) Best of health and strength in the new year to you and your family! You all do awesome work! Thank you!
-Jarod
Who's your Waifu Bennett so i can draw you with them ?
and what position do you wanna be drawn in ?
jmantime I think that kn girl he though was cute from read or die review
or the Valkyrie bitch from dominion tank police
AussieDragoon or the Valkyrie bitch from gall Force
Me, of course.
Pfft, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, You thought I was serious, didn't 'ya?
AussieDragoon I think it was her as well, either that or the Valkyrie bitch from tank police.
Sage nails it here. I was super hyped for this one. Otomo, Rintaro, huge production values. This HAD TO BE a masterpiece.
And when you watch it, you just don't feel it. Stuff just happens. There is no story really. You just watch some of the most gorgeously drawn paintings in animation history, with some good animation. And it's actually kinda weird. You sit there, thinking "This looks like the most amazing thing, but I'm not feeling anything. Is there something wrong with me!?"
6:56 If someone is asking "But why the bartender of "Blackjack" appears in Metropolis?
Osamu Tezuka always did that, put some characters in different works.
For example, you can see to Kimba in a episode of Black Jack.
You know, I have to ask. How much of Tezuka's work is...good? I mean, classics, influential and pioneering in the field I have no doubt but in terms of 'sit down and read/watch it', are they any good?
wittyreviewer Yes. Yes it is good.
My compliments to the thumbnail artist, this one looks great!
Saaage!!! you survived New year :D
Ahhh Duke Phillips. Delightful. I keep falling asleep trying to watch this movie!
A new Anime Abandon, great thing to wake up to.
Sage is on point with this one. I saw this movie when I was in middle school, and just about the only thing I remember about it is the very end scene. It really did tug at the heartstrings, but a lot of the clips of this review may as well have been brand new footage to me, as far as my brain is concerned. Kind of a shame, as the movie is gorgeous.
Whoever is doing title card art for these episodes is improving noticeably.
This was one of the first anime movies I ever saw, so it's got a big 'ol nostalgic place in my heart.
The "candle on the head" gag was an inside joke; one of Tezuka's childhood friends had an indentation on the back of his head (the result of an injury) that you could balance a candle on, so Tezuka made a recurring character with this feature.
I think they wanted to intergrade the 1920s metropolis and the manga into a condensed story while trying to make commentary about the dangers of too much power, the disconnect between a government and it's people, the working class rising up against oppression, and human identity. The robots a symbol of the working class, temia and kenichi are the witnesses of the destruction war and government control, rock is a weird mash up of the consequences of poor choices and what happens when father's abandon their sons. Just rock alone is worth a look into because of what he represents. He's there in the beginning and seen as mistake for being a poor choice of a son and head of security, he's the cause of the destruction of the city by pursuing kenichi and Tamia because of his wanting to be accepted by the man he sees as his father, I could go on but I feel like his placement in the story is to highlight the bad decisions of the characters and rather than be a full blown protagonist he's more like Frankenstein's monster in the sense that duke made him into what he is just as the scientist made Tamia into the weapon she was and both were a mistake made by men who abused their knowledge and power for their own benefit rather than focusing on the people of the city.
It's never Communism because those societies always look bleak and ruined. It has to be the bad Germans.
As unfocused and just plain odd that this film is, I still love it as one of my top anime films (that aren't Ghibli anyway). I love the music, I love the ideas, I adore the animation, and I think Tima and Kenichis relationship is just plain adorable, in a very Tintin-meets-Chii kinda way.
Kudos for getting through the entire film - I picked this up when it was first released in the States and was so frustrated with it that I gave up at roughly halfway.
To those of you wondering, Sage is 100% right about the lack of focus. If there is one thing this movie adapted proper from the manga, its the weak characterization and too many characters/plots that drift in and out only to abruptly stop.
And it doesn't help that the camera pans out so often to show off its backgrounds, and the characters get lost in it. I first watched this on a old black box TV, and damn if there weren't so many moments I was playing "where's Waldo"
Fun fact, the robot detective originally appeared in an old Astro Boy story from 1961, Hot Dog Corps. In it, his name was Pero, not a robot but actually a dog which had been turned into a humanoid cyborg dubbed #44. It's one of my favorite Astro Boy stories, actually, and worth a read.
The design of most of those later trench-coated robot detectives can probably be traced back to this character.
I read "Monster" before i dabbled in Tezuka's oeuvre and boy did I have a lot of "Hey! I know that guy/gal!" moments. Urasawa is probably the most devoted Tezuka disciple alive today.
You mean Pluto
You know? I can't disagree at all really, All I remember about this movie was characters and drama I didn't feel attached to, the very NOT hollywood approach where he doesn't save the girl and how pretty it all was.
I think you miss the point.. no one say that this movie don't have potential, just that all well crafted parts don't fit together on end.
You don't need to defend the movie bro because we're on the same page. The glue that's meant to hold everything together in the movie is the least memorable thing about it. I remember a couple scenes and the visuals well but that's about it
Same here. I remembered being impressed with the climax, but not much ABOUT it.
Up until I saw this review, all I could really remember were those final ten minutes. I'd completely forgotten that Rock and that robot detective existed at all.
Considering that the backdrop of the robot subjugation, military coup, and an _entire fucking uprising and attempted revolution_ weren't important enough to remember says it all.
Amelia Bee It mostly because it wasn't that important even in original movie despite fact that most people remember those specifically,
Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis is a really frustrating anime movie to watch. I bet if Osamu was still alive and seeing this in theaters, he'll feel ashamed and didn't like it. I would be on his side if he ever said that.
can't say I really recalled metropolis all that well. but it did get me to watch the original and I did enjoy that film
You upload this the day before Metropolis Steelbook is released in the UK.
I love this film! I remember seeing it as a kid and couldn't remember the title. It was at the age of 16 that I finally remember the title of this movie. I don't like the character designs as much, but the animation looks so damn smooth and I love the soundtrack. I wouldn't spoil the ending, but I cried.
In the scene where the minister, Lamp, is dying, a candle briefly appears over his head as he falls to the ground. This is a reference to Tezuka's various manga; the same character appears in different roles in several of Tezuka's other stories. It is a running joke (based on his name) that extreme emotion sometimes causes this character to sprout a candle from the back of his head. As for Kenichi he stays behind because wants to create a place where humans and robots can coexist peacefully. He eventually repairs Tima and opens a robot workshop. This was in the film during or at the end of the credits but was supposedly cut from the original english dub of the film.
There are some very good parts to this film as well.
For one, as you pointed out, the visual worldbuilding is very nice. Secondly, Rock is actually a menacing villain. I think it's because everytime he shoots his gun, someone or something dies. Not just side pointless one-offs, but actual ones that have precense.
The film also deals effectively with dehumanization of the robots. People who like them treat them with condescending attitude, naming them after dogs or treating them like dolls. People who don't like them abuse them with no consequences in actually uncomfortable long shots.
If any of these characters look familiar to you it might be that some of them appeared in astro boy omega factor for the GBA.
That is basically the same way I felt the first and only time I saw this movie. When it was going to come out, there was such a huge hype, posters, propaganda, comercials, and trailers in vhs' and DVD's. Metropolis was everywhere(as one could say back then), it was considered to be a masterpiece, so me and all my friends where hyped to watch it.
We bought it on release,(dont remember if it was VHS or DVD), the entire anime club was present that day for the release and we all came out from it, like....what was it about, or more like, what did we saw?
It was a terrible shame, that this movie's plot went to waste, because like you said many times, the animation is beautiful, but without a good plot, or hell an ok story, it went into the abyss of forgotten movies and no one ever talked about it ever again.
Maybe the Iris Wipe is a callback to the early days of film (where the original Metropolis was created). Many of the film-making techniques we take for granted nowadays weren't set in stone at the time, so directors had to improvise. This included editing techniques like this.
I still love this movie, but I can see where you're coming from and you did a good job explaining your problems with it. Strangely enough I was never bothered by the 70% of the things feeling superfluous. This is just a movie I keep coming back to... I don't know why it just does this effect on me. Maybe this is why I love it so much, despite its mostly unfocused story that doesn't give enough weight to the subplots, I still strangely felt invested. Maybe I see the whole film on different lights.
That thumbnail is gorgeous!
when I was a young child I remember just catching this movie at the end and I just cried, always having it on my mind when I grew up I had to search for it based on the ending alone. Finding out that this is just a mess of a film when I finally watched it. (still in my heart though)
The PI kid character is one of Tezuka's long line of stock characters. In fact, ALL characters there are stock characters, more or less (Duke Red's first appearance is the Metropolis manga). Rock is one of his two kid detective characters, and Rock is the detective character which can also be played as evil.
Whether terribly told or not, ironically this film was actually my gateway into the knowledge of anime and the separation between anime and American cartoons, basically it was the first film that I seen that distinguished the difference of anime and cartoons for me.
the funny thing about the journal is that it's color is the only red in a sea of brown and lighter and mostly darker shades. it's only slightly more subtle than the girl in red in shindler's list, which was already a highlight.
Despite the huge flaws this movie has, it's the one that jump-started my love for anime. It's visual porn for the eye to me.
For what it's worth, i've seen this, and didn't exactly hate it.
On a tangentially related note, I love the song "Shin Takarajima"
I remember that movie, that is this amazing and beautiful remake anime movie.
Good job, interview of Metropolis 2001
aww man i havent seen this movie in forever, i love this film
When I rewatched this with my friends we slowly devolved into mad laughter as Rock kept ruining everything in the movie. This movie shall always be remembered by us as "Rock Fucks Up Everything"
This is one of my favorite underrated animes, I'm still surprised it was not as widely received
its anti capitalist at heart, most wont understand some concepts of how government and capital can ally, so for this guy he had no idea what to do, since he only knows tezukas metropolis, not fritz lang's metropolis, and he misses a very important dialogue that arises, and look hes clearly against che guevara but ignores the main plot.
I think what they were trying to do with Metropolis is that they were trying to tell a mixture of the original Fritz Lang film and the Osamu Tezuka manga, and they just failed at it. They couldn't choose which aspect to be focused on, and it just kind of fell apart. But the climax scene with 'Can't stop loving you' by Ray Charles playing? Makes the movie for me, it is really the best part of the entire film. It gives me the good movie shivers! I can't hate this movie because of it!
in the opening song, what is the anime with boxing goves and the two guys fighting?
I recall hearing on an episode of ANNcast years ago that attempts to have Metropolis adapted were made several times while Tezuka was alive, only for said attempts going nowhere. I suppose since it was one of his earlier works and Tezuka having little faith in it. But it wasn't until after he passed away that Rintaro ultimately ended up having the film made anyway. Always thought that was kinda scummy, if it's true. Did you know about that, Bennett?
I loved Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It's one of my favorite silent films. The anime adaptation would have benefited if it tightened all of its plot strings and focused more on the original story.
It's like they couldn't decide to adapt the manga or remake Metropolis so they opted for both.
The crazy scientist that makes an Android. unsatisfied youth joining a rebellion to spite his father. A corrupt political elites running over the enslaved people. That's the Metropolis remake.
Just gender swap the rebel leader and don't use the Android as a doppelganger but keep her as the, sort of, love interest. Even the world building has call backs to Metropolis.
The directive and his nephew along with the robot ethics, what I assume, are from the manga adaptation.
That would probably make the use of the adopted kid as a stand in for the original protagonist. The Nazi references could be a nod to Fritz Lang fleeing pre ww2 Germany, though it plays of as cliche.
I agree, the movie needs to pick a plot. Are you a remake or an adaptation? Decide damn it.
I liked the film but after seeing the Remastered Original Metropolis, looking back, this movie was fucking terrible. Yet I still like it.
Maybe it's the throw back/precursor/being the originator style of the animator and the great wide and panning shots though awkward.
Metropolis: Likely awkward.
"The crazy scientist that makes an Android. unsatisfied youth joining a rebellion to spite his father. A corrupt political elites running over the enslaved people. That's the Metropolis remake."
No it is not.. core point of Metropolis is dehumanization of the working class and separation from administration by technological barrier. You could practically remove all those elements you mention and it would still be a proper Metropolis movie. This movie simply can't be analyzed by just surface symbolism (what is largely outdated anyway).
I remember seeing this in the early 00s. I was bored silly, and the last 10 mins smacked me out of nowhere!
I still don't know how to feel about it as a whole.
I was wondering if you were ever gonna review this anime, I remember watching this film when I was a young teen.
As for Dr. Lawton's desire to keep Tima to himself, I always thought it might've been because he felt that she was his greatest accomplishment, and he didn't feel like giving her away.
That, and its a leftover from the manga, where Lawton was actually a decent guy, and instead of handing Tima over to Duke Red (the villian) instead took her in and raised her as his child.
I've read that in the Japanese version, Kenichi stays in Metropolis to rebuild Tima. And apparently there is a deleted scene of a still shot that shows Kenichi somehow not only accomplished this, but they also run their own Robot Repair shop.
All Tezuka characters tend to act simlarly or posses similar abilities regardless of the manga they're in or when it was launched, once they were created and established as distinctive solid characters they weill rettain their abilities that made them famous.
This Kenichi is supposed to be Chief Detective Kenichi whom was a child detective that had remarkable abilities to fight crime and criminals always underestimated him because he was a child.
Now I know this sounds very wierd but again most of Tezuka's characters were created in the 1940's to early 60's. Back then Gleason Publications had the Little Wise Guys, DC comics had the Boy Commandos. It was just something that was common back in the day.
I first saw Metropolis about 12 years ago. I was visiting a friend who was already watching it and I got to see the last 20 minutes. A girl finds out she's not only not human, but also a weapon, and tries to destroy mankind as her programming asserts itself. Meanwhile, a young boy does everything he can to try and save her, only to watch her die just as she comes to her senses. Then it all ends with Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You" as everything EXPLODES! The animation was beautiful and watching what was left of the film felt enthralling.
I wouldn't get a chance to see Metropolis in full for several years, and I think Sage put it aptly; important points don't get the focus they need as the story just meanders along with too many story lines. It's a shame because the ending, to me, hinted at such a more substantial story.
Hoo boy, _The Dark Myth?_ I remember that from the bundle of trailers Manga Entertainment used to stick on every DVD they put out, and each time you saw them you'd think "Yeah... no."
Got to see this when it was released in a small movie theater. Looked beautiful, and I found the take on the silent film interesting.
Admittedly, I love this movie so much. I recognize that it has issues (a lot) but I still love it in its entirety
Katsuhiro Otomo has a knack for writing comics, where you can focus on a multitude of characters and ideas for several, SEVERAL pages. However, when going to film, it's like he's trying to write a complex string of stories that try to tie together, but the strings have to be cut into smaller pieces for runtime, and you just end up with a knotty mess.
He can write well (like in his graphic novels and short films), but you can tell he was trying to do too much in this film. And no one pulled him aside and told him to reel it in a bit.
I watched this movie when i was a lot younger and i have to admit, i cried a little at the ending scene. I rewatched it recently and... its not as good as i remembered it but i still enjoyed watching it
My brother and I still talk about how little that song choice at the end makes sense
Atlas is an Astro Boy villain. He is a robot who wants to a the world's strongest robot. Tima is a replacement for Michi, the original character, which Tezuka used for Astro Boy's robot "mother".
I remember watching this and having no idea what was going on. Glad I’m not the only one lol
As far as I can tell, you haven't reviewed anything by Kosuke Fujishima. This is another man responsible for some really amazing anime, and I'd love to see you cover such classics as Oh! My Goddess! and You're Under Arrest! Please?
I love this film. It is great!
I remember when I saw my college was going to be screening this, I had such high hopes... that were kind of dashed by the end of it.