[Anime][DVD][Sub] Metropolis

[bucko]

So, I just watched the film Metropolis. I didn't really like it. I suppose I should be more specific: I thought it was OK right up until near the end, but what happened at the end (which is a spoiler, so I'll avoid giving it away) kind of ruined any goodwill that the film had bought itself until that point.

The film is set in a futuristic world where AI has developed to the point where it's able to hold conversations and take many human jobs: there's some traditional human vs. robot tension, though it's used more as a backdrop than a central theme (somewhat in contrast to other films I've seen which deal with this issue which normally treat it more prominently). Into the city Metropolis, which is apparently the culmination of modern technology, a detective, Shunsaku Rad, and his nephew Kenichi arrive, aiming to attempt to track down the rouge scientist Dr. Laughton who is wanted for trafficking in human organs. In fact, he's working with the leader of Metropolis to build an artificial human who ends up on the run with Kenichi from the leader's adoptive son who doesn't like the way his father cares more about a robot than himself.

The film covers a range of themes: revolutions, broken families, global powerplay among others. It doesn't really dwell on anything in particular, though. I felt that there were a lot of holes in the plot - both motivation-wise and with things just not happening as they should/just not looking right. I went through a lot of the film rather irritated by this sort of thing, which didn't really improve.

Visually, the film is pretty good. The art style is somewhat Ghibli: The characters are generally somewhat chubby and, well, "cartoony" rather than the more pointy style typical of anime. Colours range between bright and more grungy, depending on the location. Lines are crisp. The tech is a mix of futuristic and retro-futuristic (cathode ray tubes everywhere!). 3D is used sometimes for special effects, but I think the character art was all cel. Video transfer is clean. There appears to be no nasty interlacing artefacts like some of the UK DVDs I've watched - I suppose it's been sped up by 4% or just had some frames duplicated to fit into the full PAL framerate.

I watched the sub and not the dub, primarily because some on-screen text near the start was translated only in the subtitles, which apparently covered all of the speech, too. It got annoying, so I just switched to the Japanese dub rather than turn them off, for some reason. There wasn't really much on-screen text after that point, so I advise just turning off the subtitles after the first few frames: The dub doesn't seem at all bad from a quick scan through. Both tracks are 6 channels on my DVD; there's a DTS-encoded English dub track, too, though I don't have my DTS setup working right now so I was unable to test this. Music is mostly somewhat jazzy (think traditional detective fare), and is pretty good.