An average movie

Since I’m a huge fan of ‘Akira’ (the comic-books and the movie), of course, I had to see this flick at some point. Unfortunately, I can’t say it was as awesome as ‘Akira’. I mean, visually, it was really impressive. It is pretty obvious that Otomo took advantage of his huge reputation in Japan and made one hell of an animated feature. Indeed, the hand-drawn animation was quite marvelous with tons of meticulous little details. But, it didn’t stop there, no, no, Otomo has also added some CGI and the combination of both techniques was quite seamless and really impressive. So, on the visual side, I was quite satisfied but, unfortunately, I can’t say that the plot was that good. Indeed, this time, Otomo decided to take the action in 1860’s Britain but, seriously, why?!? I mean, there was something really fascinating about his take of post-apocalyptic Tokyo but his vision of 19th century England was honestly rather dull. This period of time has been depicted so many times before by other authors and movie directors much more familiar with this age and it frankly felt that Otomo just took his stuff and just put it randomly in another place and another time,. Furthermore, I didn’t care much about the story which was honestly rather boring and I couldn’t believe that he ended up the whole thing again with some huge mayhem… I mean, the ending was really mind-blowing and unforgettable in ‘Akira’ but to see yet again the same thing happening in this follow-up felt just really redundant. To conclude, this flick is definitely no masterpiece but since it is visually really amazing, I still think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10