![]() Young Ray is obsessed with machinery and invention, like his father and grandfather who are in America working on something big. He cannot guard the Steamball, and the powers of the future are not under his control.Manchester, 1866. But Ray soon turns out to have no mission. He would seem at a glance to be Astroboy reprised half a century after his creation, re-set in the world of archaic steam. ![]() In fact, we have only our title-character assumption that the handsome boy hero, Ray the Steamboy, is really good in the expected anime sense of the word. Only there is no real difference between the apparent bad guys, representing the OHara Foundation and its privileged vixen, Miss Scarlett, and the apparent good guys, who are even more vague as the "Robert Stevenson" group, though they command the resources of the British Empire. The mad pursuit seemingly includes a team of bad guys and a team of better guys, resulting in the expected climb to the top of the highest object in town and a violent but satisfactory denouement. Its surface action would appear to be the pursuit of a classic Hitchcock-like "mcguffin" in the form of a technological artifact, the weirdly potent Steamball, fallen into the hands of an innocent lad. ![]() Oddly for an action film, Steamboy is not plot-driven. Steamboy is a masterpiece of its genre, which can be judged by whether it leaves its audience astonished, questioning, and satisfied all at the same time. Anime aficionados will also expect, perhaps take for granted, the fusion of the dreamlike with the realistic and fantasy with fact, presented at breakneck pace without explanation. The story does not pause for retrospection or character development. ![]() ![]() Steamboy fits the classic definition of action-packed anime: composed almost entirely of raw event, from the opening scene onward.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |