Review of Steamboy (2004) by David P — 18 Sep 2009

Steamboy is an anime film by the director of Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo) and is one I've been meaning to watch since I bought it on DVD several months ago. The English version has some strong voice acting roles in the form of Patrick Stewart (a Shakespearian actor best known as Captain Picard from Star Trek and Prof. X from X-Men), Anna Paquin (noted for playing Rogue in X-Men, and more recently Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood), and Alfred Molina (played Doctor Otto Octavius in Spider-man 2). Unlike most Anime movies I think English is the right language to watch this one in due to it being set in Victorian England. It brings a better sense of where the film is and I guess it also makes it more accessible to western viewers.

In Russian Alaska we see that engineers are experimenting with steam based technology and that there is an accident with their experiment which we presume has killed the father of Ray Steam, the principal character. We are then introduced to Ray who is living with his mother and sister in Manchester and that he is a keen inventor himself, following in the footsteps of both his father and his grandfather.

Their peaceful existence is soon brought to an abrupt end when a parcel arrives, sent by Ray's grandfather, containing their latest invention - the steam-ball. Shortly after they are interrupted by two people from the O'Hara Foundation who lay claim to the invention. His grandfather, Doctor Lloyd also arrives in time to warn off Ray and to let him escape - but not before their house is destroyed by a steam-automotive (a steam powered vehicle that does not require tracks). They give chase and soon end up in front of a moving steam train where Ray becomes trapped with no hope of escape until he is helped by a man who turns out to be Robert Stephenson's assistant. All does not go according to plan though as Ray and the steam-ball are lifted away from the train by a Zeppelin and taken to London.

A character that is introduced upon their arrival in London is a young Scarlett O'Hara who has arrived in London to oversee her families involvement in the great exhibition. What I find amusing here is that this character has actually been borrowed from the classic book by Margaret Mitchell - "Gone with the Wind". Ray sits and eats dinner with her until to his surprise his father, now part machine, walks through the door. Up until this point the steam based technology that has been seen has been more or less believable as something you'd have seen at the time or was possible to build at the time (although the steam automotive and Rays vehicle are a little dubious). As we see Ray's father, Doctor Edward Steam, now has a metal plate covering his face and where has clockwork parts replacing parts that were damaged in the accident.

As the film progresses Ray learns to understand that not all science is for the good of humankind and that his own father has succumbed to the lure of the Foundation's money - he has been producing weapons of war made from steam - many of which look very steampunk. Just to clarify, steampunk is defined as:

a genre of science fiction set in Victorian times when steam was the main source of machine power.

Of course this being set in Victorian England I guess the temptation to try and cram as much steampunk into this anime movie as possible was just too tempting to resist. We see soldiers encased in steam-powered armour (dubbed Steam-troopers), and many fanciful inventions based around steam - many which probably wouldn't work in real life. Of course though that is keeping in with the spirit of steampunk by taking a modern technology or even a futuristic technology and showing it as something powered by steam.

One of the key points in the story happens in London at "The Great Exhibition", something which was held inside a specially constructed building in Hyde Park known as "The Crystal Palace". It was an event organised to show England's "superior" technology and to show how great a nation it still was. This, amongst many other points, was very well researched to the point that even the interior of the crystal palace looked as it does on old paintings. In this movie we see the crystal palace destroyed by the warring armies of Stephenson and O'Hara. As it happens the Crystal Palace was very much like the Millennium Dome - it was built to serve a purpose and then had a turbulent future where there were many attempts to find a use for it. Unfortunately it was eventually destroyed in a fire some years after we see it getting destroyed here. There was even some research it seems into steam power as they did try to include some real science in there to help pass off the steampunk ideas as believable.

The animation of the characters was not the best I've seen in anime, but some of the backdrops and the amount of detail in scenes such as on the streets of London and inside the Crystal Palace were really good and it did leave me feeling overall quite pleased with the quality. The character development and the progression of the story seemed a bit forced in places though I have heard the DVD version I watched was missing 15 minutes of footage that were in the theatrical version and on the special edition DVD so it could be that the film flows better with those extra 15 minutes.