He is less interested in examining the era'sstark juxtapositions of machine grandeur and human misery than in using thepower of steam as an all-purpose metaphor for his apocalyptic musings.įor most of the audience,little of this will matter. Otomo's vision, however,lacks the cultural specificity of David Lynch's in The Elephant Man. Known for his attention to detail, Otomo has created steam-drivenmechinery, including tanks, planes and all-terrain vehicles that not onlyclank, soar and sail with an eye-goggling realism, but look as if they could work.This, for geeks, is pure manna.Īnd the rest of us' Thefilm's non-stop action, imaginative sweep and period authenticity - the senseof watching photos of 19th century cityscapes spring to animated life - willhit young males, especially, right where Verne's novels once hit them, squarein the vicarious-adventure pleasure centres. Understandably so,since it took ten years and Y2.4 billion to make and recouping that budget -the largest ever for a Japanese animated feature - will require more thanattracting more than anime geeks. Compared to the earlier film,however, it is more of a mainstream, all-ages entertainment. Steamboy is less a tribute to Victorian optimism that afurther meditation on the dystopian themes Otomo introduced in Akira. Sixteen years later, he is back with Steamboy, an animatedepic set in the London of 1866, when the Machine Age was well under way, JulesVerne was at the height of his powers - and the future looked like a grandadventure. In 1988, with his debut feature Akira,Katsuhiro Otomo introduced the world to the post-apocalyptic future,Japanese-style - and spurred a global boom for Japanese animation that has yetto subside.
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