Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Hayao Miyazaki is, undeniably, one of the most talented and celebrated filmmakers in the history of Japan.  Not that his ability need only be measured against that of his countrymen; short of Walt Disney and the rising star of Pixar, no other animation company in the world exists to match Miyazki’s own Studio Ghibli. My first exposure to his work was Princess Mononoke, and I instantly latched onto it as the best animated film I’d ever seen.  It was visually stunning and thematically complex, altogether different from anything I’d seen before.

And it remained my favorite for at least half a decade, even as I’ve journeyed back through Ghibli’s productions.  Now, I haven’t yet seen them all — there’s something intensely frightening about the prospect of there being no more Miyazaki for me to experience for the very first time.  After watching absolutely wonderful films such as Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I was just as enraptured by Miyazaki’s creative talent, but growing more secure in the notion that Princess Mononoke was the height of his craft.

Then I saw Lupin.  And, a couple weeks later, I saw it again.  And again, after a few months.  With the exception of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (a hopelessly addicting and energizing work of animation), no other movie or television series has penetrated my mind so thoroughly as to be an evening’s entertainment three times in less than a year.  Now, when I think of Princess Mononoke, I still see it as Miyazaki’s grandest vision, examining the spirit of mankind, celebrating the mysticism of nature, and questioning the interaction of those two worlds, that’s not really what he does best.  His skill, reduced to its purest form, is instilling an incomparable sense of life, soul, and adventure into two dimensional drawings.  My Neighbor Totoro and Lupin III show that Miyazaki is at his best on the smaller scale, and The Castle of Cagliostro is quite possibly the most hilarious, heartwarming, and fun heist film ever made.  Maybe it’s not quite a heist movie, in classic Lupin form, but it is an exercise in pure adventure, with the charismatic thief at the top of his form and at a pinnacle of lovability that he’d never quite reach again.

Unlike his heavily fantasy-laden works, Lupin is a movie more or less grounded in reality.  There are no mystical forest creatures, no airships or magical powers.  Yet somehow, Miyazaki manages to perfectly balance the real-world setting with Lupin’s absurd antics without ruining the believability of the film.  In one of the movie’s greatest — and most ridiculous — moments, Lupin bungles his meticulous plan to use a rope to get from one steep roof precipice of Cagliostro’s castle to another, and ends up leaping the distance in great cartoony bounds, bear hugging the sheer wall and holding on for dear life.  It’s entirely impossible, but by subverting our expectations and showing Lupin succeed in a wholly unexpected way, the warm appeal of Miyazaki’s presentation makes the scene a laugh-out-loud good time rather than an oh, please cringe-inducer.

The Castle of Cagliostro immortalized Lupin and no doubt helped the obscenely popular franchise continue for a solid three decades.  It’s almost a shame that Miyazaki’s work with the character is so brilliantly perfect and charming; when protagonist and director both shine so brightly, you know later efforts may never be able to capture that same quintessence of movie magic.  Of course, Miyazaki has continued to direct incredible works of animation, but with Lupin stealing the favorite slot in my heart, I wish the pair could be reunited once again, just to see what would happen.

Akira.

It’s one of those names that sticks with you.  Strong, mysterious, foreboding.  What does it mean?   Who is Akira?

Perhaps the name’s indelible quality actually results from the film itself, because Akira is one of those films you’ll never forget — even if you’re not entirely sure who or what Akira is by the end of its two hours.

Akira set a high bar in 1988 as an audio-visual powerhouse, propelled by a massive budget topping $10 million.  The meticulously detailed animation has endured for 20 years and can stand to-to-toe with the best produced even today.  Every scene bustles with activity.  Every background captures the grimy, worn-down feel of a post-war cyberpunk Tokyo, a city wallowing in its own filth and corruption.  And the movement, often a sticking point for Japanese animation, attains a Disney-esque level of fluidity.  When huge crowds riot in the streets, entire swaths of the landscape explode into rubble and dust, and biker gangs hurtle through the city, it’s obvious that budget was worth every cent.

Even throwing down a cool $11 million couldn’t truly tap into the full scope of Katsuhiro Otomo’s saga; despite the overuse of the term “epic” in the post-Lord of the Rings era, Akira personifies the term.  Otomo’s original manga, a 2000+ page landmark of graphic fiction, tells a vast, complex tale impossible   to contain on film.  Thankfully, his illustrative prowess makes the transition.  Kaneda’s red biker jacket and sleek motorcycle are transcendent; they will, quite probably, be cool forever.  The bikes and their wicked neon light trails remain one of the film’s most enduring images, despite their relatively small amount of screen time.

And then there’s the antagonist Tetsuo, who begins life as a kid with self-confidence issues and a mean streak and ends things as a maniacal, super powered psychic.  His character makes the jump to celluloid, but his story arc can’t quite do the same.  Akira’s expansive, convoluted narrative simply can’t be accurately stuffed into a two hour film, and the end result is a bit of a mess — major characters are cut completely, disparate pieces of the story are cobbled together, and only a tiny fraction of the entire saga gets its due representation.  Even the film’s namesake, the poster child for creepy Japanese children, hardly gets any screen time!  Akira is the ultimate result of psychic-powered government experimentation; he actually becomes a major part of the graphic novel’s plot, which feels far more appropriate than his brief, phoenix-like resurrection from bottles of preserved organs in the film’s final minutes.

Considering Otomo’s involvement with the animated production — and the fact that his manga didn’t end until two years after the movie’s release — it’s more appropriate to view Akira as an alternate version of the story rather than an attempted translation from one medium to the other.  A far-too-brief, not-so-coherent plot replaces the manga’s endless series of action scenes and long arcs of character development.

Even so, the film is carried on the strength of its superb animation and bizarre, stunning soundtrack.  And it was the animated version of “Akira” that helped ignite an appetite for anime in the United States, which is likely why it’s still recognized in the realm of pop culture to this day.  But maybe it’s not all about the cool motorcycles, wowza explosions and entertaining psychic powers.  When you get down to it, Akira is a pretty dark film — it begins with Armageddon, and it’s hard to say whether the city born from Tokyo’s ashes, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, really deserves to be saved at all.  On the flip side, Kaneda’s youthful determination doggedly propels a strong thematic undertone that the human spirit is worth fighting for — all you have to do is believe in yourself.

With a two-part live-action version of Akira in the works and slated for 2011, we may get to see just what it is that makes the story so captivating.  Maybe those badass bikes really are all you need…or maybe it really was just the name all this time.

The Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy is, I think, the Japanese equivalent of Star Wars.  The analogy works on all sorts of levels — Gundam is a set of three movies; Star Wars is a set of three movies (the original series, anyway).  Each advanced the genre of sci-fi thematically and visually — Star Wars affected an entire generation of moviegoers, and the iconic design of the RX-78 Gundam can still be seen echoed in anime to this day.  Both trilogies were spawned in the closing years of the 1970s, although the film version of the 0079 saga saw release in the period of time between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi’s run in theaters.  Finally, both managed to tell a story that is epic in scope and yet deeply personal, balancing the fate of billions with the struggles of a select few.  Ultimately, this is what makes them timeless.

Tracing Gundam’s history will, unsurprisingly, bring up another similarity to the Star Wars saga.  The fact that the latter trilogy ended up becoming a key piece of cinematic history was fairly miraculous, considering the myriad production problems it faced and the sheer inventiveness required for its groundbreaking special effects.  Gundam’s road to existence was, perhaps, longer and rockier — the original series, broadcast on television in 1979, didn’t exactly set the ratings board on fire.  It was canceled 9 episodes short of its intended 52-episode run.  But that wasn’t the end.  Thanks to the success of Gundam models in 1980, interest picked up, and the series was reconstructed for a theatrical run.  The second and third entries in the series, entitled Soldiers of Sorrow and Encounters in Space, contained a significant amount of newly-animated footage.  The end result is a trilogy that is even more sobering, serious, poignant, and focused than its television counterpart.  Though its mecha combat may always be Gundam’s lasting legacy, it is the characters and their message that will endure.  From within its disturbingly cold depiction of war as a senseless, hellish slaughter, the desperately hopeful ideal of Newtypes emerges as a powerful, novel concept.

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Metropolis is a true work of art inspired by and dedicated to Osamu Tezuka, who was instrumental in the formation and development of both anime and manga over the past half century. Though it was completed several years after his death, Metropolis is, in essence, the culmination of Tezuka’s lifetime of work: it builds on elements from his original Metropolis manga but significantly alters the plot to mirror Fritz Lang’s film, and addresses a swath of issues that show up across the body of his creations. Strife appears within the rigid caste system, within family, and between people and their mechanical creations.  Can the spirit of love conquer all? And, ultimately: what does it mean to be human?

The vast urban sprawl of Metropolis is meticulously and beautifully animated, and the characters are pure Tezuka: simplistic and exaggerated, instantly distinct, and especially expressive for their cartoony manifestation. The most impressive scenes bustle with traditional animation and hundreds of characters. The computer-generated imagery hasn’t aged as well, but by and large it blends well enough into the picture. The music is also a delight, and the jazzy soundtrack perfectly meshes with the film’s art deco style that is simultaneously futuristic and old-fashioned.

As an homage, Metropolis is an incredible feat. But as a movie, if Metropolis has any real failing, it’s that the film simply tries to do too much. Atlas’ struggle to overthrow the upper class becomes little more than a bridge between Kenichi and Tima’s time on the run and their capture by Duke Red, and Tima’s turn to Armageddon and subsequent redemption feels rushed and confused in the film’s final moments. The plot isn’t my favorite, but Metropolis is one of the few films in which I feel like plot is a secondary concern to the spirit of the adventure, as Kenichi and Tima’s blossoming friendship is just a tiny part of a vast world that’s realized in a manner rarely matched in cinema.

And even if the wealth of characters were to be stripped away — even if the soul of the movie, realized in so many wonderful characters who each give us a tiny glimpse into some aspect of humanity, be it greed, nobility, sorrow or love — even then, I’d still love Metropolis for finding that sublime union of the visual and the aural. As the Ziggurat falls, bringing an end to the greatness and prestige of Metropolis, it is not the sound of a deafening explosion we hear. It’s not the crash of debris, the buckling of steel, or the breaking of glass.

It’s the blues. A little bit happy, full of soul and tinged with sadness, Ray Charles brings an intimate quality to Metropolis‘ final moments that’s simply, purely human.  For that, it is unmatched.

“You’re gonna carry that weight.”

“Believe in yourself.
Not you, who believes in me.
Not me, who believes in you.
Believe in you, who believes in yourself.”

-Kamina