London in the 19th century. The light ray effects are used frequently in this movie.
This is the review of Steamboy, a second straight review of yet another 1080p movie just like the last entry. It means a post that will take ages to load and an album with lots of HD-size screenshots. It also means I can delay reviewing Myself, Yourself a little longer.
The hero that ‘failed’.
Story:-
Set up in 19th century England, a boy from a family of inventors finds himself being chased by cohorts from an American multi-national company that specialize in weapons manufacturing. Dodging bullets, tractors and airships, the boy eventually failed and capitalism wins handsomely at the end.
The story is much better than the one in The Place Promised in Our Early Days (TPPiOED). Not only that, this one has a lot of action scenes, and that can only be good. Character developments are limited, with the same reasons as the TPPiOED. The ending is better too, with some loose ends that seem to point to SteamBoy II. And I just checked ANN while wanting to make a link and there it is. I hope it will be a TV series though; this title has a lot of promise.
In other words, Steamboy really whips TPPiOED in this aspect.
Our hero chased by a train and a tractor.
Character Design:-
Just like TPPiOED, this anime employs the same realistic type designs for all of the characters here. There are considerable black hairs here too although the settings is located at Europe. Here, TPPiOED and Steamboy matches each other.
An awesome depiction of Big Ben in London.
Voice acting:-
Voice acting in this movie is superb all around, and Scarlett O’Hara particularly stands out from the rest. This is definitely a positive point of this anime, and Steamboy is better than TPPiOED. The only thing you may have problems is to really believe that Mancunians from north-west England can really speak Japanese, which actually makes me uncomfortable a little.
One of the few shots from Manchester.
Music:-
Again a section where Steamboy is better than TPPiOED, with the OST being pretty decent but not exactly. It is good to see that Steamboy did not fall into the trap of needing a special theme just for this movie.
The light effect is used in this night scene to great effect again.
Animation/Direction:-
This is where Steamboy really shines. The animation is of the highest quality, and fluid even in the fast-paced scenes. So, it is just TPPiOED that fails in fast scenes and not my quad-core CPU dropping frames. The only problem is the dark scenes where it was simply sometimes too dark to see what is happening clearly, especially in scenes in the Steam Tower near the end of the movie. It can’t be my monitor, which is a fully calibrated Samsung 226BW S-panel, so I place the fault on the movie.
The directing here is exceptional. From the start to end, you will get the feeling that this movie is not directed by someone ordinary. Great control of the storyline, usage of the camera angles, choreography of the action scenes and more is what makes this movie great.
One of the less-darker scenes here. Some of the later scenes are so dark it may frustrates you.
Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. I hope I got to see the continuation of this great title in the future.
This is one of the scenes that would be hard to animate.
