Tekkonkinkreet (2007)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Black and White: Innocence and brutality, joy an sorrow, fun and pain.There is no better way to describe this film, which in w wonderful way, manages to combine the most opposite elements (From the naive, exaggerated elements from the anime martial arts with characters with superpowers, to the nostalgic sadness of movies like "The Grave of the Fireflies") in order to create something unique and captivating.In this movie there are moments of intense violence, but also moments of sweet tenderness: Just like "Pan's Labyrinth" the most innocent things seem to appear in the same world where the most terrible things could happen. And just like in "Pan's Labyrinth" the innocence and hope constantly battles with brutality and bleakness from every's days life. (Though this movie is somewhat more optimistic) Many scenes from this film were memorable and mind-blowing: Some of them were examples of the most beautiful and unique kind of animation that I've seen in the recent years. The character design is very original too, and in it is considerably different from any other anime I've saw before.Michael Arias made a incredible work in this film. This is not the kind of movie that you see every day: It's a strange, unique and fascinating experience, something that you could love or hate, but that in no way could leave you indifferent.I highly recommend this movie to anyone.

Black and White live in a clapped out Fiat 500. They are orphans, and White is retarded. Black looks after White in the dangerous Treasure Town, stealing to keep them both alive and eventually escape. When the Yakuza plan to take over the city and rid it of the verminous street-kids, Black must fight to protect White and claim the city as his own.Imagine my delight at learning of the existence of this film. I read Black and White in the much-missed 'adult manga' magazine Pulp in the late 90s. A touching, stylish and original manga, it sat well in Pulp, and well on my bookshelf.This adaptation has a lot to offer as well. Overall I don't think it was quite as powerful as the manga, but it certainly has visual flair in surplus. Michael Arias' use of computer graphics is second to none. The beautiful, even romantic cityscapes revolve in glorious vibrancy. Like Katsuhiro Ōtomo's, Taiyo Matsumoto's designs turn mundane concrete and metalwork into true spectacles; bathed in colour, intricacy and poetry. For me, that is surely the essence of anime; one which is often spoiled by splicing-in out of place CGI (Ghost in the Shell: SAC take note) or relying solely on it (Final Fantasy, Appleseed etc). Arias succeeds with his own programming, created specifically for such a task. The result is not a video game, nor a collage of unrelated media: it is simply a 3D anime.The story is Matsumoto's, and is interesting and charming though perhaps not fantastically original. The conveyance of emotion is strong; Black's emotional breakdown is touching.Character designs are fabulous and original, though their animated versions remind me Belleville Rendez-Vous (The Triplets of Belleville in the US), released three years previously. In itself that would be a bad thing, in my view, but in reality the quirky designs contribute towards the charm of the film; and the costume design builds upon that very well.It gets a bit odd towards the end, and the ability for the children to perform fantastic acrobatics throughout is a little strange. But anime can take such liberties. However, what's the deal with the line "I gotta say I never met a tall guy worth a shít"?

Hyperknetic animation helps along a sometimes too sprawling narrative of homeless street kids White and Black who leap from building to building in the neon streets of Treasure Town.Treasure Town looks like an abandoned psychedelic amusement park that's been over run with urban sprawl (which is pretty much the center theme of the film, the lose of balance, lose of innocence, illustrated through the symbolically named White and Black). Actually almost all of the characters have names reflecting some kind of duality, "Choco" and "Vanilla", "Dusk" and "Dawn" etc.Black is the muscle, somber and always ready to fight to defend "his town" While White is the more innocent, slightly brain damaged younger of the two who can't dress himself but can leap from the backs of moving cars, like la parkour runners bitten by radioactive spiders. "Chinese Monkeys can ride clouds" White states at the beginning of the film, referencing certain aspects of China's mythic "Journey To The West", before they begin their matrix leaps/gliding across the city. The first ten minutes of which, are the best moments in the movie(and no it is never explained how they can fly, leap, fight as they do, so much so it's easy to forget how vulnerable as children they are, which is used to get effect).The trouble comes when there's too many Yakuza characters given too much back story, too much over inflated psychodrama with Black attempting to rid himself of his solitary monster like Minetaur persona (this time a Greek myth of the bull monster locked in the labyrinth), and not enough explanation of who the mysterious villain was, who were his henchmen refereed to as both "killing machines" and "aliens" more than once, and what if any connection did he have to re-developing the town, killing the kids, his mission from God, and the mysterious organization who lent him the monsters? That being said, I was emotionally absorbed into the film enough by that point, and satisfied with the unique fluidity and vividness of the color palettes, to ignore the weaker points of plot, til the movie was over. Enjoyable and unique anime, but like so many it reaches for seriousness, when whimsy would be a better fit.

I saw two films here. One i cared about, and another one that made me bore.the city:there are strong visual ideas behind the good Japanese animations. This is a feature that has two sources, according to my interpretation: one is very notion of image int art and Japanese culture. Japanese art produces now and for many centuries before images which are as complex as pleasant, they have abstract concepts, but they are visceral in the way they touch the viewer. So, art in Japan (when really good, and really Japanese) has this double component, of being highly intellectual and highly attached to the public it hits, no matter where that public comes from. That's why it's been relatively easy the process of turning Japanese culture into an universal matter (at least the 'image'(s) of the Japanese culture). The thing that amazes me is how quite different Japanese creators from different areas and different forms of expression tend to be highly coherent between them, even if not directly related. The other source comes from a certain form of expression which, once, cinema explored. i'm talking about expressionism, and the direct influence that the German films from the 20' had in so many creations afterwards. Metropolis might be the most visible face of this influence, but films like Der Golem have today still a strong impact. This film is basically a product of these two (main) influences. We have a city, which is magnificent, coloured but dark (and, as the two main characters, 'black' and 'white'). This city is worth exploring. It's powerful, and it's visual. It's visual in a false two dimensional perspective. That's because the images are more based in texture, color, and framing, than on 3d distances, point of view or perspective. So it has more of Metropolis than of Blade Runner. But it is false because the Japanese are very strong in reducing the means without loosing content. Which is to say, the deepness is all there, even though the image is apparently flat. So, this is a city worth visiting, and, no doubt, the strongest point in this film.storyline:this was, on the other hand, quite disappointing. It made me bored to follow the threads here. Black and White, the film revolves around the connection between them, and we have some other lines to follow around. The old moral gangster, his almost-sun who is forced to kill him, and the superior forces (those who live on the sphere above everything. The concept was quite simple, a kind of ying-yang (as in fact is shown along the story in the shirt of our Black), trying to understand how opposites get attracted (and repulsed) and how the bounding between those opposites creates a 'perfect' relation. But there was too much noise. The kind of 'noisy silence', 'dark coloured' city we had, is totally gone in what concerns narrative devices and storyline. There is only one point of interest, because it's visual and worked with the possibilities of the medium. The visions of White, which he draws, become often animations, with a totally different expression from the rest, allowing us to take it as something really drawn by hand. Those were powerful moments. But the rest wasn't pleasing or interesting to follow, and in the final minutes, the whole thing falls apart, precisely when the city is gone of our site, and the whole graphic expression changes into something that doesn't fit.My opinion: 3/5, check it for the city...http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com