Neo Tokyo
I´ve decided to do an anime review a day during this week starting today and I´m starting with Neo Tokyo.It´s been years since I first saw it and it´s still breathtaking. One of the most beautiful ever.
The 50 minute-long film has three segments, each with a different screenwriter and film director: Rintaro's "Labyrinth Labyrinthos," an exploration into the maze of a little girl's mind, Yoshiaki Kawajiri's "Running Man," focusing on a deadly auto race, and Katsuhiro Ōtomo's "Construction Cancellation Order," a cautionary tale about man's dependency on technology.
Labyrinth Labyrinthos is the first, following a girl and her cat into a labyrinthic surreal world, filled with weird characters and some Dali influences.
Running Man is the most overwhelming story about a racer that literally races to his excruciating death. It´s possibly the most impressive of the three shorts and the ending gives me chills.
Construction Cancellation Order sort of reminds me of a Phillip K. Dick story. A guy goes to this construction place where only robots are at work. Being the only human there, and also the supervisor, he begins to go against the main robot worker, a twitching, mad character who´s forcing the other robots to work on the construction until they literally explode and who was programmed to eliminate anything that poses a threat to the project. Being against it, the guy almost gets killed by the robot and while trying to escape the facility, the government re-activates the contract and the ending scene is the guy going to what it seems a giant robot of epic proportions.
You have to see this, it´s completely mandatory. One of the finest animes ever made, everything it´s so detailed, so well done. One of the most visually beautiful and overwhelming animated movies ever.
Wiki: