Anime: Steamboy

SIMILAR TO: (Laputa) Castle In The Sky; Akira

Starting with the visuals, I cannot emphasize enough the magnificent scale and grandieur. So much of the artwork dazzles you that at times there is simply TOO MUCH to take in. Coupled with not-too-shoddy animation (noticibly improving as the film goes on however), the breathtaking rollercoaster action sequences and gloriously atmospheric settings (both inside the Steam Tower and out in London & Manchester), faulting the visuals is being pedantic. There is also some amusing resemblance of Akira characters in the looks of some of Steamboy's characters, whilst the Steam Tower and general feel remind me of Laputa from Castle In The Sky.

The sound, whilst providing awesome sound effects and an even-more-awesome dramatic score to the film, have 2 minor flaws: firstly, the voice of Scarlett is absoultely one of the worst female voices ever; and secondly, with such a rich english backdrop to the film, it feels almost wrong that the film is in Japanese. Believe me when I say that I would usually NEVER say this, but I think I wanna see this film with english-dubbed voices, simply because the whole feel of the film is as far from Japanese as possible.

The story is where the first of the major gripes come in. For one thing, there appears to be absolutely no point of the Steam Tower as anything other than a power provider, but the whole last hour of the film is dedicated to watching it move about and crash into things whilst implying that it's so important because of this mobility feature. But is it a weapon? Err, I don't think so. So why all the fuss over it being able to move about? It's creater Dr Edwards apparently just goes all insane over it for being this uber-sized machine that can move. But the whole time I'm thinking "so what? What are you gonna do with a thing like that? It can't even shoot anything.". Another gripe with the story is the lack of explanation for what the Steam Ball actually does and the theories behind how it works. Lastly, although looking superb, this general story is far from original, and has appeared before in many films, in far more complicated and interesting ways.

The characters. From confused, to annoying, to downright underdeveloped, it's a bit of a mishmosh. The lead character is a nice enough dude, reminiscent of Pazu from Castle In The Sky. But Scartlett - oh my god one of the worst female counterparts I have ever seen. She is so annoying, so stuck up, and so deserving to get a grenade shoved down her throat that I cannot believe she represents the "heroine". Althroughout the film she goes on living in her own little world where she has everything done for her and done her way even when she's walking through the middle of a war! It's this extremity to her characters that makes you look away in disgust at how badly she has been designed for the movie. Dr Edwards is also another annoying character, and highly confused. Just what does he actually wish to accomplish? If it's "to provide power to the world" like he indicates near the start of the war, then he doesn't partiularly go about it very well. Suddenly he turns into this confused maniac. Lastly, most of the other characters in the film seem absolutely non-plussed with death. People are dying everywhere and no one is really phased by it or cares, apart from the lead character. All in all, the characters have not been given reasonable justification for their actions and behaviour.

As far as replay value goes, this film has some great set pieces and action scenes that would convince me to watch it again at some point, but also a lot of boring monologuing and poor character interaction where not much is happening to keep the viewer interested. For this reason the replay value is slightly below average.

To end with, I have to say that I enjoyed this movie more for its visuals than anything else. The story and characters were just ok enough for me to laugh at them in amusement (and not quite bad enough for me to shout out at the screen how pathetic they were), but with a ripping dramatic score and a general feel of "wow would you look at that", I ended up liking this film more than disliking it.

After missed the limited screening release in Australia, I was a bit disappointed as all my friends who saw it said it was excellent. So when the DVD came out, I purchased it without second thought. However, after watching it, I have to say I am disappointed. * Be Warn: Contain Spoiler

Animation:

The quality of animation is extremely high. The setting design is the of high quality. The London streetscapes and countrysides are realistic and detailed. From Sculptures work on buildings to the steam machines, every bit has been fully planned and well excecuted, this level of 3D graphics justified the high production cost (in fact, steamboy is one of the most expensive animation ever made). The design of the steam tower and verious machine such as the flying corp, submarine unit and armoured soldiers were very innovative. The use of colour, I cannot say it is vibrant, but it suited the London industrial feels of grey, dirty and boring. Character designs are acceptable, but I hope they can spent more time on detailing them when they are in the steam room where it is dark to see. But just on set and background design along, it is a treat to watch already.

Sound:

If they have such a big production budget, can't they at least get someone like Kenji Kawai to do the music? The music here is very ordinary, it sounded like some B grade movie soundtrack. Not one background music stands out or even memorisable. With such a big production, this is a real let down. Nevertheless, it did match the development of the movie, so it didn't disgrace the film. The sound of the character is again, standard, nothing special, they do just what are expected and nothing more, so this is another let down for me.

Story:

My friends told me that the story is very good, but for me, it is just another disappointment. The story is based on a self taught inventor/ scientist family, and is centred around 3 generation of the Steam family. Rei is the youngest member and he possess the brilliance of the family trait. The background and story plot is actually very strong and have the potential to become an intersting story, but they failed to deliver it by using interesting storyline. The story development is long and rather predictable, with the grandson stuck in between of 2 generation rivalry. The story also lacking any twists and turns, so it make the story seems extremely boring. Furthermore, the ending is pathetic, it doesn't end probably for a film, there is close to no resolution to justify all the actions. I heard that Katsuhiro Otomo has spent a long time developing this story, if that is the case, he should think twice before he do Steamboy 2 (which is in the making at this stage).

Character:

Since there are little storyline, Character development is close to non existence. At the end, I still hated Scarlet's character and personality, and Rei's is still running around with the steam ball. There is some development in the Father/ grandfather relationship right at the end, but it was little and not clearly showed. Many supporting characters were introduced but again none was developed and visually interesting, they seems to be there to drag the showtime.

Value:

I have spent $40 dollars to purchase the 2DVDs box, and I am regretting it. I normally like animation with good animation and set design, which Steamboy definitely delivered and worth watching in this aspect. But the story, music and characters doesn't worth the production value and the whole film seems to be boring and too long, it wasting such a well design set to the point that it is unbearable for me to watch.

Enjoyment:

I really didn't enjoy watching this film. It is a typical example of good money wasted movies with good computer graphics on backgroud design (sounded like Star War 1 & 2). If you are into design along, this movie is a must watch. But as an entertainment product, watch something else.

Easily the best anime in many years. I really liked this movie as you can see on my ratings.

This movie cost alot of money and you can see that it was money well spend. The details in every seen is incredible. everything is painted and all the weird weapons and buildings mixed togheter with all real buildings of that era makes an interesting mix.

I can´t wait for the second movie, i hope its gonna be as good and beautiful as this one.

If you ever gonna se an anime movie Steamboy is one of thoose you just have to see, you won´t regret it i promise.

I saw this movie from the big screen in Love & Anarchy 2004 Helsinki Film Festival, and though I normally do not write reviews, I thought I'd try this once to spare other people from disappointment. I very rarely see any anime from anything bigger than my monitor and Bio Rex has a huge screen, so I was quite excited, especially since I liked both Metropolis and Perfect Blue. Steamboy didn't deliver though, and me and my (not anime fan) friend both left the theater glad the movie was over.

The first half of the movie has some promise, but it quickly degenerates to the second half's "oh no it's going to blow up!" yawn-fest.

Animation:

Steamboy looks good and the 19th century surroundings are impressive, but compared to the very best anime I've seen it lacks something, vividness or vitality. I'm wavering between 8 and 9 but I think the worst aspects of the movie are dragging my memory of the animation down.

Sound:

Nothing special here. It wasn't impressive or bad enough for me to really notice it - I tend to forget what sound is like unless it is either really good or bad.

Story:

The story was painfully one-dimensional. There were no real plot twists and the second half was like from bad Hollywood catastrophe movie, one endless blowing up steam engine.

Characters:

Shallow caricatures with no development and none of them was really sympathetic, most of them being one-trick idealistic ponies. The main character spends most of his time bewildered, running errands for others, deciding perhaps once or twice for himself. This is the major deficiency of the movie - it's full of people you couldn't care less of, and the Hollywoodian action movie atmosphere tells you right away nobody important is going to die.

Value:

I might watch it from time to time if I had it on DVD, given the beauty of its animation and the rarity of steampunk animation. I'd watch it purely for the visual aspects of it, however.

Enjoyment:

The animation was pretty and I'm easily entertained, so I did get some enjoyment out of it, but it was hollow, Hollywoodian candy-floss enjoyment.

In conclusion - if you really want to see steam pipes and 19th century buildings in a mindless 70s catastrophe movie format, Steamboy might be the movie for you. I wouldn't really recommend it to anybody else.