Steamboy (2004)

The movie Steamboy is an anime style story, inclusive of action, steam and romance. It set in Victorian Britain, and starts in Manchester where steam is used internationally, before World War 1. The main characters include the boy Ray, who is bullied at school, the rich girl Scarlett and Rei’s father called Dr Steam, unknown at the beginning of the story. When a mysterious parcel arrives at his family’s home, his life changes forever, and he sees things he would never forget. It contains a piece of steam machinery called the steamball, a machine of extreme power. The movie creates amazing vehicles, some of which you could actually imagine in real life, and it quickly entranced me into loving the film. The first minutes of action was fast paced and fun, and you can easily get to love the characters.

The most interesting parts were when the artists payed amazing attention to detail, and you can tell that they took time and care with it. The characters have depth and description, with them having funny personalities. I loved the contraptions and machines, the creators bringing modern machinery to ancient history. The movie has mystery and lots of unknown turns, but I won’t spoil the movie for you. I particularly enjoyed the flying machines and blimps, reminding me of the book Cogheart, a steampunk-style trilogy: Cogheart, MoonLocket and newly released SkyCircus. As with most animes, this film looks very good, with the painting and design completely perfected. When the characters were in Manchester and London, they showed landmarks such as Piccadilly Station Buckingham Palace and Big Ben.

Although I give it high praise, it could improve a slight more and I thought that the sound was off, with Rei sounding quite bad, as if someone was trying to imitate a Mancunian accent. When the battle music was playing, the voices were quite muffled and quiet, making it hard to fully hear them talking. I found out that the plot was very hard to understand and keep up with as there was many different people and things happening. The evil intentions of the villains are hard to understand, and all of the factions have different passions that are quite alike. The lighting in some cases is dark and gloomy so it’s hard to see and the colours make the characters hard to see.

The characters have good personalities, and one specific character (called Scarlett) starts as mean person in the start, however she changes throughout the film. At the start, she kicks her pet dog and abuses it, like in Cogheart where bad characters kick mechs, but she changes and starts to become a good girl. I don’t especially like her, because she is stuck up and whiney. Ray is a strange character as he first is voiced by a woman when he is a boy, and he has an awkward and terrible Mancunian accent. I personally hate Ray’s father as he has unreal dreams and does stupid stuff like landing a big, flying castle on London. He works with the O’Hara Foundation, a large group of people who make war weapons to fight against other countries, and use steam to attack countries, basically starting World War 1. Fortunately, they get stopped before they do anything bad or destructive.