Anime review: Metropolis, a Japanese anime movie from 2001!

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. 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. A young Japanese visitor Kenichi (Kei Kobayashi) happens to be near the lab and rescue Tima, both of them has no knowledge of the city, together they discover the dark side of the city of Metropolis.

In comparison:

Although Tezuka San never revealed where his story was based or inspired from, many people say this is the anime remake of Fritz Langs Metropolis, and yes I can see why in comparison.

in the 1927 version the story is about an advanced technology city Metropolis that is controlled by the rich that is known as the thinkers because they think of how they can develop the city and the poor that is known as the workers because they do the work for the thinkers and are forced to live at the underground. Same idea as the rich at the surface and the poor at the underground, the only different is that the 1927 movie has no robots, exept one, the replica of the female lead character.

Another different is the characters, in 1927 there is no Japanese visitor as a hero, instead the Dukes son Rock or his real name Freder is the hero, and the girl Tima is named Maria is a human and she is a leader of a resistance group. And the Replica of Maria is more then happy to destroy Maria. The main villain is dr Laughton or in the real name dr Rotwang. Kenichi and his uncle Ban was only made in the manga version and anime, Rock was never in the manga comic book and Tima was named Maria also in the Comic Book.

Overall:

The anime is well done and the story is ok even though it's obvious the script wasn't finished as Tezuka San mentioned before. At first the plot is very strong and exiting and fun detective story but when the revolution starts it change the tone to war movie, and some characters just disappear at the end. And another problem is what is typical 2001-2009 movie and that is full use of CGI, even though the characters are anime, the background is too much CGI perhaps, despite its a good movie it's also clear how it lost against "Spirited Away" who were a fully animated movie as Hayao Miyazaki said "CGI should only be used 20 % of the movie" thankfully some of the the 2010s movies has listen to his advice. But as for what it is, it's very exiting movie, a cute relationship between Tima and Kenichi, the voice acting is spot on to their roles, and it is a good remake of Fritz Langs version.

Metropolizu gets the reward 7.1 / 10!