Tekkon Kinkreet

Eye-watering Japanimation might not have all the spit-shined polish afforded a Miyazaki production, though any excuse offered from the same studio that provided many eclectic animated thrills with the Animatrix compilation could only be explained by admiring their unabashed passion for detail. Nearly every frame of this marvelous, Manga-adapted feature is littered with an unprecedented level of specific illustrations that really aims to set the bar for sheer artistic commitment. It is the city itself that rules the film, and these passionate animators do not disappoint when it comes to delivering scene after scene showcasing an unfathomable detail rendered in these massive, severely inspired cityscapes.

First time Director Michael Arias does stumble a bit at times, making the episodic material feel that way, but we do see a compelling fusion with CGI effects in many of the action scenes that make this visually stimulating feast rise to fluidly spectacular levels. Despite many pratfalls found in the script, sometimes silly voice acting (common in the genre), and some (at times) counter-intuitive pacing, scene-for-scene Tekon kinkurîto (US title is Tekkonkinkreet) will probably remain the most compulsively rewatchable, primarily hand-drawn work of art to be savored by pencil-aficionados until the next driven team of artists desires even more.

This film is amazing. I can't put it in any words better than that. If you're an anime fan that enjoys a lot of variety you need to see this film, no questions asked. The animation to this movie is bizarre but yet very vivid at the same time to the point of where you're saying exactly what I said in my summary: "Wow!" The storyline is where it continues to get better. It seems like it's an average tale of two brothers who are heroes to a town and do great things but it turns out that there's so much more. The heroes are both good and bad (just as their names describe: Black and White) and the villains are as bad as they come. The only issue is that some of the storyline leaves a couple holes at the end, making you wonder what happened but yet giving you an idea in your head of what you think might've happened. Nevertheless, although Tekkonkinkreet is rated R and very violent, it's still a great movie that I truly believe any anime fan will come to love.

A moralistic fairy tale set in modern day. Brothers Black and White are orphans and run the streets of Treasure Town, doing what Cats do best, stealing and running. The Yakuza show up and start causing concern. Leaving little Black and sort out the situation. It is unbelievable how good this film is. Nuanced interesting characters are a vehicle for a over arching moral diatribe on cities, the people in them, and how we all deal with each other. White is purity, he's naive, but has a general sense of good, which is married to his seemingly stunted educational and emotional growth. His older brother, Black, on the other hand, is smart, streetwise, good in a fight, and has lost the innocence that White still possess. And we are able to interpret events that occur during the film through both of their eyes. This film had very interesting art, childish of a sort, but designed for the sake of experimentation, and to remind us that we're in a story that is seen and narrated by children. It used a full palette of colors and symbolism to help extend the story to the viewer and it succeeded masterfully. All said, this film broke my heart in a million different beautiful ways. I loved this film, and not since Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies) has a film been able to effect me so profoundly. I know I will never forget this film. When this comes out of DVD, rent it, or, if you're lucky, run to the theater and catch this before it disappears.

"Tekkon Kinkreet" is a sporadically engaging, though frequently confusing, anime gangster film from director Michael Arias. The story, based on the comic book by Taiyo Matsumoto, focuses on two homeless orphans, one named Black and the other White, who live on the streets of Treasure Town, a seething cauldron of criminality, vice and corruption. Black fancies himself a superhero crime-fighter, while White, who is given to extrasensory knowledge and visions, dreams of one day moving away from the city and getting a home of their own on the beach. Thanks to Black's insistence on taking on the bad guys, both youngsters get caught up in a turf war between the Yakuza and some robot-like killers who are duking it out for ownership of the city.

Fans of anime will find much to enjoy in this film, which is marked by beautifully detailed urban landscapes, exciting action and chase sequences, occasional lyrical flights into fantasy, and a sometimes touching tale about commitment and friendship centered on the two young boys. On the other hand, the plethora of characters and occasional narrative incoherence can make it difficult at times to understand what exactly is going on, particularly when the story takes a decidedly metaphysical turn (with imagery taken straight out of "Contact") in the final half hour. Still, the visuals alone make it worth a gander.

Hyperknetic animation helps along a sometimes too sprawling narrative of homeless street kids White and Black who leap from building to building in the neon streets of Treasure Town.

Treasure Town looks like an abandoned psychedelic amusement park that's been over run with urban sprawl (which is pretty much the center theme of the film, the lose of balance, lose of innocence, illustrated through the symbolically named White and Black). Actually almost all of the characters have names reflecting some kind of duality, "Choco" and "Vanilla", "Dusk" and "Dawn" etc.

Black is the muscle, somber and always ready to fight to defend "his town" While White is the more innocent, slightly brain damaged younger of the two who can't dress himself but can leap from the backs of moving cars, like la parkour runners bitten by radioactive spiders. "Chinese Monkeys can ride clouds" White states at the beginning of the film, referencing certain aspects of China's mythic "Journey To The West", before they begin their matrix leaps/gliding across the city. The first ten minutes of which, are the best moments in the movie(and no it is never explained how they can fly, leap, fight as they do, so much so it's easy to forget how vulnerable as children they are, which is used to get effect).

The trouble comes when there's too many Yakuza characters given too much back story, too much over inflated psychodrama with Black attempting to rid himself of his solitary monster like Minetaur persona (this time a Greek myth of the bull monster locked in the labyrinth), and not enough explanation of who the mysterious villain was, who were his henchmen refereed to as both "killing machines" and "aliens" more than once, and what if any connection did he have to re-developing the town, killing the kids, his mission from God, and the mysterious organization who lent him the monsters? That being said, I was emotionally absorbed into the film enough by that point, and satisfied with the unique fluidity and vividness of the color palettes, to ignore the weaker points of plot, til the movie was over. Enjoyable and unique anime, but like so many it reaches for seriousness, when whimsy would be a better fit.