 Based upon a pre-WWII manga by Astroboy creator Osamu Tezuka, Metropolis is one of the more bizarre animated films you’re ever likely to see. With a pair of consummate anime professionals at the helm – Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) writes and Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999, Doomed Megalopolis) directs – it’s also one of the best. An almost entirely concept-driven piece of cinema, Tezuka’s Metropolis pays homage to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove as well as Fritz Lang’s original 1920s German silent film. If the plot is sometimes ambiguous, the message is simple and sensible enough: don’t abuse your technology, or it’s bound to abuse you back.
 Though Metropolis’ animation is truly impressive, its roots lie in those odd, early visions of a mechanized future peculiar to the 1920s and 30s. Metropolis itself is a sprawling industrial bastion divided into three zones and governed by the Mayor and his right-hand man, the popular Duke Red. Japanese detective Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi arrive in Metropolis searching for Dr. Laughton, an organ thief designing, in secret, an advanced new robot named Tima for Duke Red, who plans to give her exclusive control of Metropolis by way of the Ziggurat, a towering structure capable of creating massive electromagnetic fields.
Following Dr. Laughton’s murder at the hands of Duke Red’s estranged, robot-hating son Rock, Kenichi is separated from his uncle and left wandering the lower levels of Metropolis with Tima and a cleaning robot named Fifi. Beset on all sides by Rock’s anti-robot task force, the Marduk, and a disgruntled proletariat army determined to take back their jobs from Metropolis’ robot population. Duke Red, however, is the real mastermind, subverting both the Mayor and the revolutionary leader Atlas and eventually killing the Mayor and instituting martial law.
Reunited in the snowbound dystopian cityscape left by the failed revolution, Red is shocked to find Tima alive and is quick to resume his plan to have her take control of the Ziggurat. However, her adventures with Kenichi have left her confused and uncertain, and Metropolis’ fear of its own technology spells its doom when Tima takes her throne, merges her memory with that of the city’s beleaguered robot population and judges humanity to be vicious and obsolete. Even her bond with Kenichi may not be strong enough to forgive in the face of such cruelty.
 Metropolis is not a perfect film, but it is an interesting one, and very nice to watch, combining art-deco architecture and some truly bizarre character design with jaw-dropping hand-drawn and computer animation. It may be a little hard to understand, particularly toward the end, but its perks far outweigh its flaws. The finale – mass destruction set to Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You” – will send chills down your spine. You may be thrown off by the look of the film if you’re expecting a conventional anime or a faithful update of Lang’s Metropolis, but stick with it and you’ll find that what the movie lacks in overall cohesiveness it more than makes up for in sheer vision and heart.
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