Unsolicited Reviews

Steamboy

Another lavish anime with fantastic animation, incredible gadgets and cardboard-thin characters.

Set around 1860, this one’s very much a steampunk fantasy with huge steam-powered machines clattering about the countryside to the detriment of first Manchester and then, on a much larger scale, London and the Royal Exhibition. There’s plenty of gigantic steam leviathans, air machines, battle suits, etc, etc.

There are some amazing images and beautiful set pieces but the real problem is the characters—with the exception of the young protagonist James Ray Steam, they’re almost all unlikeable and/or uninteresting. Their motivations are confusing and contradictory and several of the big speeches about the ultimate purpose of science are quite lame.

It’s also too long by abut 20 minutes—I felt annoyed when what I thought was the end turned out to be a hiatus before the big, final showdown. From then on I was bored.

I felt very let down by this movie since it initially looked so good.

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