This film suffers heavily from a series of misguided judgements from the director, mainly concerning the look and sound of the film. The style of the characters don't work very well with the 3D backgrounds, even though the blend between 2D and 3D itself is seamless. A lot would have been gained by paying less attention to Tezuka's original style in favour of a more "contemporary" way of drawing.
Much worse is the choice of music though, the kind of 20s jazz used throughout the film doesn't work *at all* with the futuristic and grandiose settings. This never becomes as clear as during the climax of the film, when Rock blows the tower up and Tima falls to her death, all to the tones of a bloody Ray Charles jazz-ballad. The climax immediately turns into an anti-climax.
This is overall the main flaw with the movie; the director's insistence on making everything as "twenties" as possible, even when it comes to its polar opposites. On the one hand the 20s nightlife clichés: the jazz, cabaret and variety shows, on the other the megalomaniac and modernistic projects aiming to build a new and perfect society. It's like trying to imagine Mussolini at a Josephine Baker show. It doesn't work.
There's also quite a few problems with the characterisation of most of the characters (except perhaps Tima), we just never find out enough about what really drives and motivates these people.
Which is all a shame, because this COULD have been really good, the film is (with the above objections in mind) visually stunning, and if they had fleshed out the characters a bit more the plot would have been a lot more intriguing. Oh well. Guess nothing will ever match Akira...
Much worse is the choice of music though, the kind of 20s jazz used throughout the film doesn't work *at all* with the futuristic and grandiose settings. This never becomes as clear as during the climax of the film, when Rock blows the tower up and Tima falls to her death, all to the tones of a bloody Ray Charles jazz-ballad. The climax immediately turns into an anti-climax.
This is overall the main flaw with the movie; the director's insistence on making everything as "twenties" as possible, even when it comes to its polar opposites. On the one hand the 20s nightlife clichés: the jazz, cabaret and variety shows, on the other the megalomaniac and modernistic projects aiming to build a new and perfect society. It's like trying to imagine Mussolini at a Josephine Baker show. It doesn't work.
There's also quite a few problems with the characterisation of most of the characters (except perhaps Tima), we just never find out enough about what really drives and motivates these people.
Which is all a shame, because this COULD have been really good, the film is (with the above objections in mind) visually stunning, and if they had fleshed out the characters a bit more the plot would have been a lot more intriguing. Oh well. Guess nothing will ever match Akira...