3/5 Lacks a Clear Direction
  by Atli Hafsteinsson (Viborg, Denmark)
Metropolis looks promising and exciting. I had the completely false notion before watching it that it was along the lines of Akira and Ghost in the Shell. It's considerably more cartoony than that, and yet it never seems to harbour any clear style, going from Astroboy cuteness to full-on anime. I don't think it's the masterpiece it has largely been hyped at, but it's far from a bad film either. It's definitely watchable and enjoyable, but it lacks a right-on identity. It tries to be a lot of things at once, and thus misses most of those marks.

The city is almost a character in itself; there are so many places we see in it, it's clear a lot of vision was behind this movie. The plot is a little too loose, though. It involves a cruel despot - Duke Red of the Marduks - seizing power in the midst of a rebellion by the oppressed lower class, who don't appreciate robots taking their jobs. Japanese detective Shunshaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi stumble into this plot and before long, Kenichi is on the run with a power-mad and robot-hating Marduk, Rock, out to get him and the girl robot Tima, whom Kenichi and his uncle save from a mad scientist's burning lab. There is a lot of dialogue and slow pan scenes that make everything more drawn-out than it really has to.

I can't decide what to make of this movie's vision. I can't tell what kind of artistic direction it was trying to take, cutesy or realistic. It often fuses the two, and not always to a pleasing result, sadly. The dialogue is often very stiff, too, and explains way too much to the audience than necessary. Three times in the film, we are told that robots can't leave their zones. Admittedly, a lot of the bad dialogue can be traced to the dubbing. The Japanese dialogue and the English dub quite differentiate on more than one occasion (this is evidenced by the English subtitles, even with the dub selected). Even if you're Russian, I would skip the Russian language track, as they didn't even bother to drown out the English dub before pasting it on top. Very sloppy work, as far as I'm concerned. But back to the film.

It has to be said that there are a lot of problems with the plot itself. The leader of the human rebellion talks about their poor living conditions. Then why not show it? A coup happens, and instead of an epic animated scene, we are shown a lot of old World War photos with a lot of special effects to give the impression of something happening. Instead of showing us what it really means to live in Metropolis, we're told everything. The viewer is a tourist, not an inhabitant of the film, which makes it feel very vague. The story's well thought-out, but the audience aren't drawn into it as well as they could have been. It doesn't make sense how the characters keep running into each other in this supposedly huge city, either, and it doesn't seem to terribly matter when characters are shot at. Another grave plot error is that the movie doesn't take a stand with or against robots, as to whether they're supposed to have personality or not. There is a 'tragic' death scene where a robot detective is shot, but because he has no personality, I can't tell if I'm supposed to feel sad or not.

Don't get me wrong, this movie has its good moments, but most of those occur in the last thirty minutes of the film, when Shunsaku Ban finally takes matters into his own hands, and stopping Duke Red becomes a matter of life and death... until Tima fulfils her "true destiny". The resolve is as vague as the character approach, but hey, it wasn't an astounding movie to begin with. Metropolis isn't astounding. It's a good film, but far from wonderful. An interesting cinematic experiment, it still needed its plot tightened up, because it all feels unnecessarily long. Most of all, though, it needed a clear artistic direction.

5/5 Metropolis customer review
  by M. Hamblin (Carmen, San Diego)
Awesome movie, great visuals and color. Plot and dialogue aren't the best, but if you want the coolest looking anime ever, this is it. Totally worth the [...] bucks or whatever I paid for it.

3/5 mistake
  by Kenshiro Wakabayashi (MA)
actually, i couldn't get what i wanted bacause a seller misunderstood what i wanted. however, he dealt with this problem well. i appreciate him and hopefully this nvever happen again.

4/5 Ambitous, Beautiful Anime
  by Sam M.
Metropolis is one of the more interesting animes I have seen, and I was very pleased that it was made.
I've gotten tired of all the self important and slow moving animes(Jin Roh), or the female friendly, melodramatic animes(take your pick) that have seemed to dominate the scene in recent times.
Not to say that Metropolis is some kind of manly gorefest(Ninja Scroll). However, despite it's childish looks(the film is designed after Tezuka's art style), the film has a mature feel to it, and never dips into melodrama.
The animation is genuinely beautiful, with a mix of 2D and 3D. The 3D looks a little dated, but still looks nice overall. The style may throw some people off. It basically has an Astro Boy look to it.
The story is well done, with a screenplay by Akira's Katsuhiro Otomo. It's basically the "man vs. robot" theme we have seen many times before, but it's executed quite well here. The characters are interesting and relatable, and the world is quite beautiful and fleshed out.
It also has a moving ending, which was quite unique, due to the odd choice of music played throughout the climax(you'll see).
Metropolis is one of the last animes that really impressed me, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves animation with a mature story, and not a bunch of melodrama and flash.



4/5 Great movie
  by H. Kang (USA)
Metropolis does not go beyond the average sci fi movie, but it's enjoyable. And there's something about the style that I like. It's strange story and climax makes me want to see it again.