Tekkonkinkreet


1.5/4

Starring (voices): Scott Menville, Kamali Minter, Rick Gomez

Rated R for Some Violent and Disturbing Images, and Brief Sexuality

Let me state right up front that I am not an expert on anime.  In fact, for the longest time I despised it because I foolishly assumed that all anime was as crudely drawn with horribly dubbed dialogue and infantile plotting as the shows on Cartoon Network like “Pokemon” or “Yu-Gi-Oh.”  I began to reassess my position after a friend introduced me to the TV show “Inuyasha,” but I really began to see how wrong I was after watching movies by Hayao Miyazaki.  I won’t say that I’m hooked, but I’m as open to watching anime movies as I am to anything else.

“Tekkonkinkreet” is a visually dazzling film.  The animation is inventive, detailed and gorgeous.  Unfortunately, the longer it goes on, the less sense it makes.  It flies off the rails fairly quickly, and about halfway through the movie, I just stopped caring.  Pity, because the film is really beautiful to look at.

Treasure Town is being battled over by the Cats (the street orphans), the Yakuza, and the government.  Our heroes, the quiet and mature Black (Menville) and the flighty, childish White ( Minter), are members of the Cats, and like any sane person caught in this dangerous world, they want to get out.  Also in the picture are Kimura (Gomez), a Yakuza member whose impending fatherhood is causing to re-evaluate his life, and a Joker wannabe who seeks to rule Treasure Town by building an amusement park over the slums.

I don’t know if the film was edited beyond recognition when it crossed over the Pacific or if it was a disaster right from the get go. Either way, “Tekkonkinkreet” is a mess, easily the worst animated movie I’ve ever seen.  Huge chunks of the plot seem to be missing, and the film has a tendency to get metaphysical near the end (not to its benefit).  Because of that, my feeling is that this was crap on both sides of the ocean.  The voice work is effective, but no one stands out.

“Tekkonkinkreet” is based on a manga called, of all things, “Black and White,” which I have not read.  Maybe that’s the reason why I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything in this movie.  Or maybe it was because I watched it dubbed, which for anime films, has never been a problem.  Of course, I could conduct and experiment and watch it again in Japanese with subtitles, but something tells me it wouldn’t be worth my time.

Note: I’m not sure why the MPAA gave this film an R rating. When it comes to anime, they’re usually pretty lenient on the blood and gore (“Princess Monoke” was about ten times gorier than this and that got a PG-13). There is a scene at a strip club and the stripper is not wearing anything, but her hands cover the naughty bits and it’s very brief. Then again, no one understands the MPAA (why anyone pays attention to them anymore, I’ll never know).

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