#Steamboy full movie english dub s tv#

The only significant female character, in fact, is an incredibly annoying, spoiled, rich girl.īoth the audio and video transfers are superb. Unlike many anime films, there is little blood, no severed extremities flying about, and no buxom, scantily clad (or nude) young women. The film is rated PG-13, largely for its action. There is also a flood of historical anachronisms, such as Tower Bridge (not built until 1894) and huge steel battleships sailing up the Thames in 1866! The chaos is way over the top, which will excite some viewers as much as it turns off others. There's more action here than you're likely to see in any live-action film this side of Michael Bay, with climax piled on climax like a film from a caffeine-charged James Cameron. Once the action cuts loose, however, such weighty thoughts slip into the background. This aspect of the film is well intentioned, but it doesn't really delve as deeply as it thinks it does into the knotty conundrum of science constrained (and who will be charged with constraining it) versus science unleashed (for good or bad). Lloyd wants to confine the power of the steam ball to diversions like children's fun-fairs, while Eddie champions the power of steam for all sorts of things, even if that means dramatic advances in the weapons of war. Neither Lloyd nor Eddie is a black and white caricature, but both have more than a trace of the deranged, mad scientist in them. By this time, Lloyd and Eddie have become estranged and gone their separate ways, while young Ray lives with his mother and sister. As the plot cuts from a brief introduction in the 1830s to 1866, Lloyd and Eddie have discovered a way to contain steam in a tiny, extremely powerful ball (a not too-subtle metaphor for nuclear power, methinks). The Steam family-patriarch Lloyd, his son Eddie, and grandson Ray (the title character)-are engineering geniuses, specializing in the development of steam power. The surprisingly straightforward story takes place in Victorian England, circa 1866. A few flat-looking, hand-drawn static shots were the only jarring elements. But computer enhancement makes possible the sort of visual feast that 2D alone can never deliver, whether it's showing a scene first defocused then sliding into focus as one of the characters looks through a telescopic device, or the reflections of characters from shards of flying glass. It can't, since it has to blend with the 2D drawing. The latter doesn't have the sort of depth you see in a computer-animated feature. Steamboy also effectively combines both conventional 2D and computer animation. It doesn't escape entirely from anime's often stilted character movement, but there was so much going on that I rarely noticed. It's the most visually stunning animated feature I've ever seen. Steamboy, Otomo's follow-up to Akira, has been 10 years in the making, and one viewing will show you why. It may also be the single best-known anime feature ever made. Equally renowned, though far less prolific, is Katsuhiro Otomo, whose last major effort, Akira, was a violent affair with one of those wildly intricate anime plots. The most celebrated of these anime artists is Hayao Miyazaki ( Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle). In fact, anime can be downright gorgeous in the hands of its best practitioners, compensating in style for what it lacks in fluidity-and then some.

#Steamboy full movie english dub s tv#

The plots are often frustratingly convoluted, and the character movements are reminiscent of the jerky, limited animation techniques championed back in the late 1950s and 1960s by the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory for television shows like The Flintstones and Johnny Quest.īut despite these problems, anime is frequently far more elaborately drawn than those creaky-looking TV potboilers.

I'm a big fan of both traditional and computer animation, but I've never quite warmed up to the unique Japanese animation style known as anime. Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, Japanese), Dolby Surround (French, Spanish, Portuguese).