The plot kicks off as a hyper-rich oligarch named Duke Red embarks on a megaproject: a giant tower called the Ziggurat, containing a secret weapon controlled by a robot clone of his dead daughter Tima. Much like Lang’s film, this takes place In a stratified city this time, it’s held in fraught tension between humans and robots. Gif source: what’s this incarnation of Metropolis? Compared to the Tezuka manga, which apparently took inspiration from one still image of Lang’s film in a magazine, this one draws a lot more on the 1927 film’s imagery, if not so much its plot, and tragically drops the manga’s gender swapping elements. We’ll do a more comprehensive look at Rintaro in the future when I have more time to research! This screenplay was taken up by Madhouse co-founder Rintaro (Shigeyuki Hayashi), whose anime experience dates back even further than Otomo, working for Tezuka on that first 1963 production of Astro Boy that pretty much created TV anime and directing its first film in 1964. Which is a shame for fans of sexy gecko robot dances.
He pops up first as the screenwriter for Metropolis (2001) - which to be clear, despite similar robot girl themes, is an adaptation of a classic Osamu Tezuka manga, not a direct response to the 1927 Fritz Lang film. Otomo seems to have gotten the feature film bug again in the 2000s. But he found time at some point to work on short films, directing the fantastic Cannon Fodder section of Memories, and providing stories for the other two segments… helping to give one Satoshi Kon his start. He made a brief foray into live action in the 90s with World Apartment Horror, which generally doesn’t seem to have been especially well received but will probably be worth a look on Tokusatsu Night. I can’t say why, especially! Perhaps he was just happier drawing manga. Gif source: dropping a work as definitive as Akira, Otomo did not return to full length anime for some time. I wrote quite a bit about Otomo’s historical influences back when we saw Akira, and we’ve also seen his excellent short films such as Construction Cancellation Order, Cannon Fodder and Combustible in the early days of Animation Night! But that’s not the only Otomo… tonight we’ll look at his major feature films that aren’t Akira. Gif source: we will finish off the list of films by Katsuhiro Otomo, the unrivalled master of the square-headed boy in a world of meticulously drawn machinery. Hello friends! I am once again running late for Animation Night! But I will not miss a Thursday unless I’m like, in the hospital or something.
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