手塚治虫のブッダ 赤い砂漠よ！美しく/ Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Red Desert! Beautiful / Buddha: The Great Departure

Tekuka, so often called the ‘God of Manga’, never really paid much attention to the original stories he was adapting. When it came to Metropolis, for example, he simply riffed off the impression he got when seeing the poster for the film. When it comes to the life story of the key figure of one of the most significant religions that make up the melting pot of Japanese syncretic faith, one might expect a little more reverence. And reverence there is, even though this account is highly fictionalised – what Tezuka opted to do was to create an original story about the Indian caste system and run it in parallel to the early life of Siddhartha Gautama, providing action and drama to complement the biographical story and bringing the main characters of each strand together as prominent figures in a key battle. Unlike most accounts of the life of Buddha, Tezuka opts to not to take an abstract, historically isolated view of the young prince, in which he is kept in his palace and sheltered until as a young adult he goes out into the world and sees the hardships there, leading to his becoming a mendicant, here he is shown training in martial arts, participating in battle and being exposed at an early age to death, poverty and, as a result, compassion – but being too young to do anything about it. This nuanced version could be argued as bringing a sense of realism and thus maturity, or as being more juvenile because it allows for typical shounen elements like battles, swordplay training, melodrama and cackling battle-freak antagonists, which is an interesting microcosm of the general reputation Tezuka maintains.

The manga ran from 1972 to 1983, and this adaptation contained perhaps the first third of the story, which tallies with reports that there will be a further two parts of this 2011 animation, though it having cost a billion yen to make this one and the result being…not exactly spectacular may throw a wrench into those plans. There is a lot of appeal to the production here, and it’s clear a lot has been spent, but, well, even for a Toei movie it doesn’t exactly look superb. The aesthetic finds an uneasy medium between slick new-millennium character design and Tezuka’s charming caricature style – though it seems the Buddha manga was even more restrained than Black Jack in terms of characters with exaggerated features, reflecting the historical background and reverence due – ultimately ending up with a style that looks slightly retro but mostly a bit generic. The major characters also stick out from the background cast as over-attractive and pale in a rather jarring way – and not just the sheltered prince. There’s a notable lack of that charming, somewhat babyish Tezuka humour I’m certain was in the manga.

Shortly before Siddhartha is born, a lower-caste urchin called Chapra transcends his station in life by aborting an assassination plot at the last moment and instead saving its target’s life, for which he is adopted and raised as noble. Meanwhile, the young Buddha is born and raised in a martial tradition. Sneaking out of the palace, he falls in love with a girl named Migaila, but when the possibility of a relationship reaches his father, she is flogged and has her eyes put out, while he is given an appropriate bride. At first a rather wet child, not apparently divine other than the Lion King-esque gathering of animals for his birth, Siddhartha becomes a warrior, and when his father’s army must clash with that of the rival kingdom of Kosala, headed by Chapra, the two meet – if only for a fraction of a second, where Chapra, poisoned by an arrow, falls just short of killing the prince. Chapra survives thanks the intervention of his magical friend – a small, seemingly eternally young boy named Tatta who can possess animals in the strangest supernatural element of the film – but ultimately the caste system will once again prove its inequalities cannot be held at bay forever.

Though I enjoyed this, liked the unique spin on the traditional story and found the art appealing overall, it fell well short of really wowing me, and structurally was a mess. It may have worked in an ongoing manga paced this way, but in a feature film it was confusing and uneven, resulting in batches of boredom. The voice cast was also odd, for while I’m sure no expense was spared, Toei seem to have decided to bring in a large chunk of the cast of Naruto, including many of the most distinctive seiyuu: Takeuchi Junko (Naruto himself) is the young Capra, while Tatte is Konohamaru (also Pikachu and Chopper). Temari (Paku Romi, in female mode) plays Tatta’s sister, while the slug Katsuya shows up as Siddhartha’s child bride and Hinata goes a little against type as Migaila. Hinata’s seiyuu, Mizuki Nana, was also Collette in Tales of Symphonia, and is joined by Orikasa Ai as the young Siddhartha, who played Genis – as well as the boy in the third One Piece movie and Quatre in Gundam Wing. While there’s much to say for an all-star cast, this one was just too full of distinctive shounen voices – which got distracting.

Overall, well worth seeing, and I want to see more, but this could and should have been a whole lot better. 

メトロポリス/ Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis

Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis was a very interesting project. Made in 2001, of course long after the death of the legendary Tezuka, who created the likes of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, it was based on a 1949 manga he created, adapted by Akira’s Outomo Katsuhiro and directed by Rintaro, renowned Harlock helmsman who worked with Tezuka in the 60s.

These names, the legacy of the ‘Godfather of Anime’ and Madhouse at their very best make for a striking feature. The production values are excellent, and Tezuka’s distinctive and old-fashioned designs look superb when animated beautifully. The setpieces, cg-tinted like those of Gankutsuou, are often stunning, and the jazz soundtrack is undeniably fun. It’s midway between Tezuka’s manga, which sounds a bit odd and babyish, and the live-action film (Tezuka supposedly wrote his version based on nothing but a movie poster) – Tezuka’s recurring character designs and overall tone dominate, but scenery and power structures are straight from Lang’s vision.

The plot gets somewhat sloppy towards the end, with Rock in particular mostly just being there as an unstable catalyst, but it’s beautiful and good fun and a fitting homage to the legacy of one of the most important figures in animation history.

(expanded from impressions, 28.2.08)

Astro Boy (2009)

Before I watched it, I was not at all upset that I missed Astro Boy at the cinema. The quality of CG looked substandard, Americanized adaptations of manga are notoriously almost always dire and the trailer, with its focus on butt-guns, made it look like the tone would be patronizing and unfunny.

So I was surprised and delighted when it transpired that I this was a film I adored, to the extent that I’m actually quite upset I didn’t see it in the cinema, and even toyed with the idea of waking early to catch it in one of the last places it was showing. It saddens me that it will always be remembered as a box-office failure with low aggregate scores on film review websites like Rotten Tomatoes – although if you go there, you soon realize that the critics are polarized: there are some who deplore the film as unoriginal and derivative, but others who enthuse much as I am enthusing now. This is the first film in a long time, I think since Pan’s Labyrinth, that has actually made me want to buy the DVD – and that includes Wall-E.

For all the reviewers’ eagerness to draw comparisons with other CG films, though, the one that this was most reminiscent of was A.I., and of course it is well worth remembering that Tezuka was coming up with these concepts in the 50s, albeit in his style of the time, which was rather twee and oversimplified. But this is a film of the new millennium, and anything but simple.

What struck me about this film was its madness. I don’t understand the people calling it formulaic, because it’s amazing to me that the script was passed. Astro Boy deals with a father’s guilt over the death of a child, the possibility of absolute parental rejection, harrowing ideas of identity, belonging and humanity and concepts of social inequality. The emotions poor Toby is subjected to, as well as those of Tenma, really shocked me. I was far more moved here than by The Lovely Bones or its ilk.

Not only did it have surprising depth, but it was also quirky in a very appealing way. The comic relief, done in very British style, was actually amusing, and the inventive action sequences were far cleverer than I had anticipated – plus the sheer scale of the final showdown was impressive, Astro himself managing to fill sweet, pitiable and awesome roles.

There were flaws, undeniably. Parodies of Obama’s slogans, a character design for Kristen Bell’s character that will date very quickly, a warmongering bad guy whose personality just failed to actually have a third dimension and a scene where it seems Astro will refuse to destroy any other robots on moral grounds but then wordlessly trashes dozens could’ve been better thought-through, and yes, in visual terms it was a fair bit behind the pack – although that’s something any Tezuka fan ought to be used to.

Voice acting was generally very good. Freddie Highmore seemed an odd choice to me, a bit old and deep-voiced for the role, but his American accent was good and he brought a real softness and likeability to the role. There were some big names involved, Nathan Lane and Eugene Levy providing witty, if slightly lazy turns, Samuel L. Jackson showing up for one line, and Nicholas Cage and Bill Nighy giving performances I’d like to think they really did care about.

Imagi, the Hong Kong-based company which provided the animation, has now shut down, possibly as a direct result of the financial failure of this film. That is such a shame, and I hope that the planned sequel really will get outsourced and made.

(originally written 26.2.10)