TheHappySpaceman Reviews - Metropolis vs. Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis. In this video I compare the two. Some people have said I’m too harsh on the anime, but seeing how I’m not usually a fan of anime to begin with eh. Also, forgive the stuttering, I was still new to this whole reviewing thing, and I wasn’t even intending to upload.
In 1927, a German director Fritz Lang created the first sci-fi/futuristic movie 'Metropolis' that later was the inspiration of the Ridley Scott movie 'Blade Runner' and the classic Japanese anime movie 'Ghost In The Shell'.In 1945, a young Manga painter and writer Osamu Tezuka made his own version of 'Metropolis' in a trilogy comic book, 'Metropolis', 'Lost World', and 'New World' but the trilogy remained unfinished when he instead started to work on 'Astroboy' and even today the Metropolis manga book is still incomplete. During the 60s, Tezuka San was working on anime tv series 'Astroboy' and 'Kimba the White Lion' with the director Rintaro and writer Katsuhiro Otomo.
In the late 70s Rintaro was scheduled for his first feature film, and he asked Tezuka San if he could make an anime version of his comic book 'Metropolis', but Tezuka San replied 'No, the story is yet not finished, and proberly not ready for a anime', so the idea was scratched and Rintaro instead did the classic movie 'Galaxy Express 999'. Sadly in 1989 Osamu Tezuka San passed away, he was only 60 years old.In 1997, Katsuhiro Otomo and Rintaro got the green light and co worked to make the Metropolis movie, it was animated, voice acted, filmed, edited and released in 2001.Story:In a distant future, the city of Metropolis is build by robots who became the full time workers and most of the human inhabitants are losing their jobs and are forced to live underground known as zone 1 and zone 2, only the rich or famous people can afford to live on the surface. Duke Red (Taro Ishida) has created the most impressive weapon, a large tower known as the Ziggurat.
![Comparison Metropolis Tezuka Comparison Metropolis Tezuka](http://www.undertheradarmag.com/uploads/review_images/tezukametropolisblu.jpg)
However the tower needs a host, a robotic skeleton with human organs. Red hires the corrupted Doctor Laughton (Junpei Takigochi) to create an android replica of his deceased daughter Tima (Yuka Imoto) to sit on the thrown of Ziggurat. But the plan backfire when Reds adopted son Rock (koki Okada) is filled with jealousy over Tima and destroy Laughtons lab to burn Tima alive.
![Tezuka Tezuka](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125631371/873477616.jpg)
A visually ambitious slice of futuristic drama, Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (2001) is kinda-sorta based on his 1949 manga and Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film.but not really. The spirit is the same, though: like most stories rooted in science fiction, Metropolis attempts to predict the future by borrowing concepts from different time periods, inventing a few new ones, and hoping to reveal something meaningful about our current time in the process. It doesn't fulfill all those promises, but at least stays afloat on pure visual strength: with its impressive combination of hand-drawn animation and CGI elements, Metropolis easily defies its modest $15M budget and still looks more like a movie twice that expensive.But while it looks pretty great, Metropolis bites off more than it can chew in the story department. Written by Katsuhiro Otomo and directed by Shigeyuki 'Rintaro' Hayashi, this is a far-reaching film with more than a few memorable moments but way too much going on. Our story takes place in Metropolis, an enormous futuristic city at war with itself: robots have taken most of the jobs and manual labor, leaving many humans destitute.or at the very least, pissed off. Meanwhile, de facto leader Duke Red unveils the recently-completed 'Ziggurat', a humongous skyscraper that will increase the power of mankind (read: himself) on an international scale, but violence breaks out at the opening ceremony between man and machine.
Meanwhile, Duke Red's son Rock - who moonlights as the leader of a anti-robot vigilante group - has ties to an organ trafficking doctor, so private detective Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi are brought in to investigate. It's also revealed that the doc has been building an advanced robot that resembles Duke Red's late daughter Tima, who is activated before a fiery explosion that levels the doctor's laboratory. Soon enough, Tima is self-aware.There's more where that came from. A lot more, in fact: I only summarized the first 20 minutes, and Metropolis clocks in at nearly two hours. Unfortunately, the film' effectiveness is deflated by its own ambitious scope, a combination of too many supporting characters and detours during what should be a more streamlined journey ( Akira was guilty of this too, but it at least had better developed characters.) Speaking of which, my way more subjective gripe about Metropolis is its character design: not surprisingly, most look like something right out of Tezuka's, but they often stick out for all the wrong reasons when set against the film's dark and largely serious atmosphere.
(Duke Red and detective Shunsaku Ban are the worst offenders - they seem so out of place that it's hard to take them seriously.) Still, it's the way-too-crowded plot of Metropolis that leaves the sourest aftertaste, robbing an otherwise interesting story of its immediate effectiveness and lasting power. That's bad news for any film, but especially one steeped in science fiction.I remember enjoying Metropolis a bit more back in 2002, when it was first released on by Columbia Tri-Star.
It was an impressive effort with solid A/V specs, cool gatefold packaging, and a nice little assortment of bonus features presented on a second 'mini disc'.