Tekkonkinkreet

Tekkon Kinkreet is the most stunning visual anime that I seen since Akira. Director Arias, use of colors and directing style is nothing short of genius. The best part of this movie is its heart felt story between the two brothers Black and White. Black is the older more responsible brother, who is tough and violent, while White is the younger, off beat, childish brother. Black and White watch over the city they live in called Treasure City, in a gang called the cats. But it's the duality of the orphaned brothers that makes this story so touching. The tough older brother, Black, needs his young brother White to remind him of his humanity and White needs his brother to help protect him.

As the two brothers protect Treasure City, the evil developer Snake moves in to take over. As he vows to kill Black and White, the brothers bonds are tested. Black is faced with his dark inner demons of hatred and violence and White must bring him back.

There are no giant robots in Tekkon Kinkreet or magic. Although the brothers Black and White seem to be able to fly on and off rooftops, it seems to be the limit of any type of super powers. This anime is amazing purely for its story and visual look. If you are a fan of anime or cartoons, rent this movie. You will not be disappointed.

This will be brief because I'm not sure what to say. I don't mean that in a bad way, its just that trying to describe this film is not at all easy.

Tekkonkinkreet is the story of two kids named Black and White. They are known as the Cats and are considered by some to be the protectors of a part of the city known as Treasure Town. As a year goes by a yakuza captain returns to the city and a man named Snake appears with his eye on turning that part of the city into an amusement park.

I'm explaining it badly, forgive me, since this is a film thats better to experience than to hear about. Using a mix of 2D and 3D cgi this is a film that is vibrantly alive. There is a real sense of place that is missing from many animated films. The world bleeds off the screen. The film rarely sits still its constantly in motion as characters go from place to place or engage in battles for life and death. Its an amazing thing to watch.

The characters are very real. I watched the film with the English dub (I know boo hiss) and the choices of actors was wonderful. The voices of the kids were kids and seemed to perfectly match their personalities. The same goes for the other characters as well. What I liked was that the kids were kids. They seemed to be real kids behaving in the situations presented. Granted the film is wildly fantastical but the personalities and behaviors outside of the running and jumping and beating people up was real.

A word of warning, this is a dark film at times. There is a great deal of violence, which despite being animated is very nasty and bloody. The film also has some dark undertones as some of the characters slip into the darkness of their souls. Its disturbing enough to get an R rating.

On the down side the film takes a while to get going. I was about a third of the way in before it started to click with me. No doubt it was due in part to the very large cast of characters. (I'm certain this is going to play better on a second viewing). My other problem with the film was a shift towards the end which makes me think I may have missed something along the way. I feel as though I missed the climax of somethings. (Again this will probably be better on the next viewing) Over all worth a shot. definitely see this in widescreen since the compositions are geared to that.

"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.

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.

"Tekkonkinkreet", literally translated as reinforced concrete, is an hypnotic experience set upon the kaleidoscopic drop of some truly gorgeous drawings which tells the tale of two street urchins as they do battle with an array of colourful characters in order to defend their city from being taken over. Adapted from the three volume manga series by Taiyo Matsumoto, the film doesn't usually carry the infuriating hallmarks of a manga-to-anime switch over, which can often make the film an unenjoyable experience as the viewer struggles to come to terms with the story and characters and in the process miss the film. In this instance, any preconceptions are staved as "Tekkonkinkreet" absorbs the viewer all but instantly in a cacophony of animation, sound and, perhaps surprisingly, emotion.

Tekkonkinkreets original manga form is what is known as a "seinen" manga, which is a subset of the animated genre which targets males, usually, from between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and as a twenty-four year old male myself, I perhaps enjoyed it more than others outside my demographic bracket. Ostensibly, it is a boys film as the premise bases itself on gangster films as our two street urchin protagonists, the aptly named "Black" and "White" find themselves coming into contact with an ever escalating array of Yakuza as they try to take over the ridiculously sublime "Treasure Town". There is a great deal of violence within the film (which while in my eyes completely justifies the progression of the film is incredibly misleading when you look at the UK Film Certificate Branding of a mere 12) as the battles waged become more intense, more bloody and more important to the survival of our two heroes. Tekkonkinkreet also utilises a much more avant-garde style of animation which we are currently beginning to see more of in the western world as an increasing acceptance of things which are outside of the "norm" are filtering through, and it is certainly befitting of the style. Tekkonkinkreet successfully delivers on appeasing any and all who are looking for high quality hand drawn animation which surpasses the eternally vapid conveyor belt of repetitiveness that is Pixar, but it also delivers on being more than just a "fighting" film.

The intrinsic parts of Tekkonkinkreet prove in being the messages the director and original creator are wishing to convey to their audiences, of which there are two major points. Firstly, we have the ying and yang nature of Black and White, how their coexistence is precisely that, how they are mirror images of each other, how in essence they are two parts of the same hole and that you could be forgiven for thinking someone spliced a singular entity at birth to form two. "Black" is the streetwise member of the "Cats", as they are known within the city, as he has a savvy and cunning which has enabled he and white to be high on the Treasure Town food chain. As expected for being orphaned children, each have their issues, and with Black it is the impression that he is only one bad day away from total insanity and mental breakdown, while with "White" the issue is if he were to have a mental breakdown it wouldn't have much to break. White is stated as being eleven within the film yet quite clearly finds it difficult keeping a grasp on reality and his surroundings as his mental age is quite obviously, less than that. However, it is not merely how much White relies on Black for survival with the treacherous confines, but it is also how much Black relies on White, as the director twists the uses of Black and White and indeed Good and Evil as roles interchange in all quarters. Secondly, we have yet again another confrontation, another coming together of two forces yet this time it is more theory based. Treasure Town is a gloriously colourful island sitting sedately in the centre of a river yet its buildings and inhabitants for all their grandeur seem incredibly outdated. Treasure Town isn't exactly a time warp but you could be forgiven for thinking so, it is a place contented in its own time, but for the Yakuza this is not acceptable as they wish to bring Treasure Town forward into the 21st Century, to update the scenery, to turn it into a money making venture of epic proportions . This second theme resonates with a fear of old replacing new, yet the new not being perhaps as grand as everyone believes it to be, it is a fear of traditions being eradicated by a machine which has no need for sentiment, and this feeling, from both points of view, is embedded within characters on all sides of the battle.

Tekkonkinkreet is a highly charged emotional film, which looks at characters interactions and dependence on each other the yings and yangs within the city itself, the coming together of old and new and more evidently, people's desire for power. The phrase "my city" is uttered on numerous occasions as individuals all attempt to lay claim to the treasured turf, yet none truly understanding what the phrase means or why they are saying it. Tekkonkinkreet is a highly successful anime, which blends together elements of crime, violence, humour and fantasy creating a cerebral journey for the senses as director Michael Arias superbly transcribes this moralistic tale with an energetic style of directing which perhaps possesses some of the best and "coolest" "reveal" shots in recent times. Tekkkonkinkreet is an absorbing adventure which transcends genres and blurs styles in a hot pot of beautiful angst and proves itself to be worth a watch for any who allows themselves to be enveloped by a world which is never told in black and white.