Neo Tokyo

I enjoyed these shorts, especially the Otomo one, but the first two were a little too strange for me. I give them extra points for being original and the animation in all three was stellar (I wish more TV anime was as impressive). It just didn't leave as much of an impression as Memories did. But if you're an anime or animation freak, it's worth checking out.

"Labyrinth Tales" is a very peculiar art-house "mini-collection" of three short stories, one of which, perhaps, has become a classic. I won't say that this is the most pleasant and fascinating spectacle, but definitely quite original, not constrained by the clichés of the anime industry. The plot opens with a story in the atmosphere of "Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury about a girl and her cat who do not listen her mother and fall into an ominous carnival through the mirror. There they are shown two more stories, the first of which, "The Running Man", has taken on a life of its own.

This story, at one time, was rated as the weakest, but it is still looks the most impressive. First of all, due to its naturalistic cruelty, combined with static and meditativeness. But I would note psychology. The story is sustained in a gloomy cyberpunk style. The unbeaten champion of racing, having lost his former grip, is no longer able to withstand competitors. He is exhausted by the constant tension of the competition. But ambitions doe not let him go - these are all that is left of him. Therefore, he decides to win the losing race at any cost - by simply blowing up the cars of rivals with telekinesis. However, even left alone on the track, he cannot escape from the slavery of his ambitions. He is locked in a labyrinth of his own passions. It begins to seem to him that he is still being overtaken - by the younger ghost of himself. Monitor shows that his heart has stopped and the driver of the car is dead, but the dead man is the first (and only) to cross the finish line, continuing the race with his own ghost to complete self-destruction. The dead racer is driven only by his ambitions, which first made him to "remove the obstacles" to the goal - to murder other pilots - and then murdered him too.

The second story (Construction Cancellation Order) is more like an ironically absurd story by Robert Sheckley. A Japanese company employee arrives at a flood-damaged, jungle besieged automated construction site in a third world country to investigate what happened to the former site manager and decide to cancell construction or not. However, AI-controlled construction develops according to its own laws. It seems that the machines must withstand the chaos of the jungle advancing from all sides, but they only multiply the chaos themselves, going crazy in an attempt to realize a meaningless task. Ultimately, the new manager has to fight not so much with the life-affirming chaos of nature, but with the meaningless, self-destructive chaos of pseudo-intelligent machines, looking for the central computer in the labyrinth of mechanisms.

As for the girl and her cat, they themselves become part of the carnival chaos, seemingly never getting out of their labyrinth.

Before X, before Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, before Akira, there was Neo Tokyo, a fine blend of high-end animation and artistic expression, as well as experimentation. This is far from the typical "big eyes, small mouth" anime with big guns, big robots, and girls with big, um, "talents". In other words, this is not your younger siblings' anime.

The first selection, "Labyrinth" by Rin Taro, is a child's imagination run wild. If Cirque de Soleil was animated, it would be this. A little girl and her faithful cat cross over into a bizarre world via a mirror and are entertained by a mime-like clown, a traveling circus, and a surreal world of high walls and mindboggling imagery. Much like the imagination of a child, this is not a short to be analyzed, picked over, and dissected. "Labyrinth" is meant to be simply enjoyed. Other than the basic storyline, the short bounces around at a moment's notice from one scene to another and doesn't seem to fit together at all, but in the end it does. This piece is what I like to call "moving artwork". Several of the scenes could be plucked from the screen and hung on a wall.

The second short was a favourite of MTV's "Liquid Television" in the early 90's. Yoshiaki Kawajiri's "The Running Man" tells the story of a driver who has been surviving death-defying form of racing for ten years. It's a brilliant accomplishment and unfortunately, one that's been wearing on him, since other drivers are dead in a year. A reporter begins covering the driver's unstoppable career and accidently discovers why this man always wins. Finally, the stress of tempting death night after night breaks him and in an instant, all hell breaks loose. The design of the characters is very realistic, atypical for early to mid-80's anime. The speed and look of the racing vehicles is fluid and the piece is never boring, even sticking around with you after the very end. Despite the morbid nature of this short, I honestly believe that "The Running Man" should be part of Speedvision's Lost Drive-In collection.

The finale could easily be subtitled "The Akira Experiment Project". Three years before he would reshape the world of anime forever, Katsuhiro Otomo wrote and directed "The Order To Stop Construction", the tale of a hapless Japanese executive sent to shut down an overblown project in a tropical rainforest powered by robots and void of humans. Unfortunately, what stands between him and his orders is a foreman robot on a strict work schedule that it is hellbent on keeping, so much that the last human sent to supervise the place has disappeared without a trace. Despite the fact that the worker robots and the machines they operate keep exploding day in and day out, the foreman is convinced that if the others work just a little bit harder, it can meet the ever important deadline and nothing is going to stop that, including the human sent out to do so. Every element of "Akira" can be seen here, from character and vehicle designs to pipe movements and mud bubbles. It's like watching a mini-version of "Akira" without any psychic goings-on. Also like "Akira", "The Order To Stop Construction" is also a bit of social satire, making fun of the important and somewhat overbearing work ethic of the Japanese. My only complaint is the dubbing. The original Japanese language with subtitles would have added a bit more to this instead of the weak English voice-acting. This short would have been a fun addition to the "Akira" special addition recently released, as well as an important one.

This fine, yet brief, collection of mid-80's animation from Japan is definitely worthy of DVD consideration and it's a shame that it hasn't received one as of yet.

It's a shame this collection of short films is called "Neo Tokyo" when it has nothing to do with Akira, and was not intended to have anything to do with Akira. None of these shorts even take place in Neo Tokyo. Nonetheless, Neo Tokyo/Manie-Manie/Labyrinth Tales is a pretty cool collection of short films.

Labyrinth Labyrinthos, the first short in the collection, has the weakest story of the three, but the best visuals. The animation is insane. The short is both fun and incredibly unsettling throughout, but I didn't feel satisfied with the ending.

Running Man is probably the most "Neo Tokyo" of all of the shorts. It's gorgeous and horrifying. The story is fairly straightforward, but it'll leave you with a sad little pit in your stomach by the end.

Cancellation Order is my favorite. It has all of the bells and whistles that I love in a Katsuhiro Otomo film; cool and clever setting and character design and damn good writing/story. The way it uses environmental storytelling is fantastic.

All in all, if you like weird cartoons and have 50 minutes to spare, give Neo Tokyo a go. It's pretty great.

I can't say I always knew why was going on, but I had a good time watching Neo Tokyo.

The first of three short films inside this anthology had more of a fantastical spin than a sci-fi one, the second was a kind of grim and gritty sci-fi story that I think I connected with the least, and then the third and final part was like a blend of sci-fi and comedy. It looked at the madness of a world where robots enforce rules too strictly, having a bit of a Kafka feel, owing to the human protagonist at its centre who's slowly driven mad.

It's short and maybe not the kind of thing that'll stick with me, but I really liked two out of three shorts here, and didn't mind the other. Plus, the animation is surprisingly great throughout the entire thing.