by AbsoluteDestiny » Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:54 am
[More spoilers]
@Tsuji
It's hard to explain - I guess i can say "it didn't really do it for me".
The emotional aspect - with the relationship between Tima and Kenichi, the emotion just wasn't there for me. Again, it's just a feeling of the anime falling short of it's design as I thought the idea of the ending was great but for some reason it didn't trigger any emotion. I know it's cliché but I actually wanted to see evidence of tima regaining some of her former humanity at the end, just before falling to her demise.
The socio/political aspect - I think this was (surprisingly) underplayed to the point that we never really got to know what everyone was fighting for. Duke Red's motivation was unclear (what's so good about controlling the ziggurat anyway?), the rebellion was more of a cliche than a cause and the actual significance of the Ziggurat was enigmatic at best. I'm sure a few details here and there would have solved these problems but I felt like I had to interpolate the details for myself which I don't think is a good thing in this situation.
I think those are the only elements I can fully describe - most of it was just a feeling that for some unknown reason it wasn't working on me.
I can only be astounded at the actual level of animation work put into the movie, and my criticisms are anything but towards its technical acheivements. My objection is to the storyline which despite having all the right setpeices never seemed to spark my excitement.
When the revolution happens I should have some feeling of anticipation, whether it be "oh no, they'll all be killed" or "oh no they are all being deceived, isn't it terrible" or whatever. It just seems to happen without giving us enough attachement to the situtation to form a reaction to it. Simiarly when Tima goes nuts it's almost dissapointing that it's a mechanical problem - there is no conflict of emotion. I personally would have preferred a fight between the humanness of tima versus her design than accidentally having her psycho-robo switch activated as that detaches the emotional significance of the change. We can feel a little pathos as we see Kenichi lose his friend, but even that isn;t really sufficient - they've been apart for so long and she's already gone nuts by the time kenichi wakes up.
I think there's lots of things like this where I wasn't attached to what was going on to really care. I had no feeling for the plight of the people of metropolis (they didn't seem abused or have any real cause to complain about anything), no feeling towards the actions of the duke and little feeling towards Tima's psycho switch being turned on. These are all things that in a well made work would have engaged my interest in some way - maybe even in a significantly moving way if done well. Because it didn't, I can only claim that Metropolis didn't succeed.
Of course it is entirely possible that I'm asking too much and that there's a good reason for everything in the movie being underplayed... if so then I guess it was too subtle for me. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I could have done.