Fat chance of that, the amount of research I’ve done on that bad boy guarantees it won’t see light of day for at least another year because it is damn hard to keep it objective when comparing Bubblegum Crisis: A Story Of Knight Sabers with its crap counterpart Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040. See what I mean about being objective?

No, let us not worry about the arguments that TV series will result in. Let us instead discuss the movie that anyone who calls him or herself an anime fan should, NO! MUST watch and I don’t just mean go buy the DVD release. No sir, I mean this movie is a cinematic wonder that has to be seen on the BIG SCREEN. This movie may be the best movie since Katsuhiro Otomo wrote and directed Akira. I’m talking about Metropolis. Based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka with a screenplay by Otomo and directed by Rintaro, this is the movie that demonstrates why Tezuka is “Manga No Kamisama” and gives us Rintaro’s best movie since Kamui No Ken (Dagger Of Kamui).

What defines a human? Apparently Tezuka, Otomo and Rintaro already know.

Metropolis
Can a machine, built to be the ultimate weapon, strive to be human without knowing it is a machine?
Do robots have the same basic rights as their creators?
Do they even have emotions?

Looking at the two (2) main robot characters in Metropolis these questions come to mind. The first question is at the core of understanding the character of Tima, the robot girl who doesn’t know who or what she is. Upon her awakening in the film she imprints on the boy Kenichi, a stranger to Metropolis himself. At first Tima isn’t even aware of her own name but as time progresses more information comes back to her. She identifies so much with Kenichi that it becomes the word she says more than any other in the film.

Tima is the ultimate weapon, the key to understanding why the antagonist Duke Red built a structure known only as “The Ziggurat”. Yet, though Tima strives to be human it is more because of the fact she interacts with humans throughout the movie. This wasn’t her purpose; it is not the reason she was made. Her creator, Dr. Laughton, built her to be his ultimate achievement of robotics. Duke Red had her made to help him conquer the world. She is told throughout the movie by the anti-hero Rock that she is nothing more a robot, a tool. Only Kenichi and his uncle Shusaku Ban see her as something more.

Compare her with Pero, the robot detective who is assigned to help Shusaku Ban track down the criminal Dr. Laughton. Tima may be the heart of the movie but Pero is definitely the brain. With Ban’s help he questions the way things are. To him every action has a consequence but he lacks the understanding of why the action happened in the first place. His role is more than just the “Robot Detective”, his role is to ask the question “Why is there emotion?”

Metropolis is a bubbling cauldron of social unrest, robot workers were introduced to make life easy for the population, instead it just made them poorer than they were before. But that isn’t the robots’ fault. Pero recognizes this problem, he realizes that the robots want what the masses want, to live happily. The difference between Pero and Tima is knowing who and what they are and what their purpose is. Pero knows what his job is and when he tries to be more than that he is given a harsh and final judgment by the citizens of Metropolis.

Every character in Metropolis represents a human emotion. As Tima comes in to contact with these emotions it helps shape her view of the world. She sees blind hatred from Rock, egomania from Duke Red and compassion from Ban and Kenichi. Sadly it is Duke Red’s greed and lust for power that shapes her final decision when she is in the Ziggurat. Greed, pain and suffering are the result of human emotion and the only way to eliminate them is to eliminate humanity. Thus we come to the powerful lesson of this brilliant film. It is so blindingly obvious, something that all the characters of the movie knew yet overlooked. Machines aren’t evil, they are tools and a tool is only as harmful as its user. Thus the ending of the movie, with this message in mind, throws us a curve ball. Tima may have been a machine on the outside but her heart was all too human.

This movie is gorgeous. Otomo really outdid himself in its writing and Rintaro’s direction tells a very clear concise story. The animation is just incredible and the jazzy style of the soundtrack is great. The last 10 minutes will quite possibly make you rethink how you listen to Ray Charles sing “Can’t Stop Loving You”. I really love this movie; it might be the closest thing to a truly great film the genre (anime, not Science Fiction) has produced in 20 years. Of course it has its flaws, nothing in the universe is truly perfect but as a whole the movie makes me smile. Let people complain about the character design, if they do then they miss the point of the film and really don’t understand what anime is nor do they comprehend who or what Osamu Tezuka was. This movie IS Anime. No collection should be without it. How someone can call himself or herself an “anime fan” and see the love and genius of this movie escapes me. Osamu Tezuka DEFINES anime. “Metropolis” is the Crown Jewel of the last 20 years of anime.