It’s a world of mustaches, monocles, pulsing pistons, bubbling boilers, and cheerful imperialism. Set in London and Manchester, England, in a fictional 1866, Steamboy envisions a world populated by the best elements of the “steampunk” subgenre of science fiction. In short, I watched it as an adult with adult responsibilities and a grown-up perspective, and I’ve come to a conclusion:Īnd to that I say: so what? It’s still a beautiful if not Earth-shatteringly profound film. So I dusted off my DVD copy and re-watched the film with a fresh perspective, a perspective colored by more than half a decade of not living in college dorms, of not cooking top ramen for dinner, of having more pressing matters to argue about than the merits of animated films. I’d be lying if I said Steamboy made much of an impression on me, although dim memories stir of the raging debate on the Internet surrounding the film: “It’s too long.” “The pacing is off.” “The plot is too thin.” “It’s not Akira.” I saw the film only once, on the day of its American home video release in July 2005, when I purchased it for full retail price from the now-defunct video store chain Suncoast Motion Picture Company. Currently that film is Redline, but eight years ago, that film was Steamboy, directed by anime heavyweight Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of Akira. Every decade or so, some visionary artist in Japan (assisted by a horde of animators, background artists, and other technical staff) produces a film of astounding visual brilliance that still manages to split the fandom along partisan lines, resulting in endless quibbling over whether the story should take a backseat to the cinematography.
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