#57: Robot Carnival (1987)

Directors: Various

Screenplay: Various

Voice Cast: Various

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: Following the theme of robots, the brightest talents of Japanese animation in the late eighties create their unique shorts based around this premise.

Anthologies, in any form, are a growing pleasure for me in cinema. Even if they have weak or bad segments, there's usually enough which stand tall and make the project worthy of its existence. In anime it makes sense to, whether they are financially viable or sadly not, as when they are brought together, they allow both veterans of anime alongside new talent to collaborate with creative control, at least in theory, on interesting results. Sometimes there is a tentative theme to the anime anthologies, and in some cases with the most successful being The Animatrix (2003), there has been a great advantage in anthologies based on Western properties. And when a segment from Short Peace (2013)  gains an Academy nomination for Best Animated Short, the existence of anthologies is something that has to be protected, especially as they are a way to allow creators to have a project when feature films or TV series are not on their schedule.

Katsuhiro Otomo, the legendary manga author and film director of Akira (1988), has plenty of experience of anthology anime, Robot Carnival one of the first he was involved with alongside Neo Tokyo the same year, collaborating into the present day on Short Peace as well. And in this fruitful period, a year before his own adaptation of his manga Akira would effectively bring anime to the West as much as resonate in the medium in general as one of its sacred texts, he among other creators, animators and character designers were allowed this project where, as long as there's robots involved, anything was on the table in what could be done in each of their segments.

From https://www.ganriki.org/media/2014/robot-carnival-172.jpg

Opening / Ending

Director and Scenario: Katsuhiro Otomo

And Otomo with his opening and ending sequences, which bookmark the anthology altogether, decides to show how sick his sense of humour is. A literal robot carnival, with the title on the front of the monstrocity, a giant fortress that is spectacular for the villagers in a post apocalyptic desert to see, with its ballerina robots and robotic orchestra. Said carnival also fires missiles, blows everything up and has explosives within those ballerinas. Especially with the ending, its Otomo being as blackly humour as he can with its unremorseful mayhem, never questioning that the humour deliberately involves scenes where character are clear turned to vapour by all of this.

You are immediately aware that the animation throughout this production, originally an OVA, is incredible throughout the anthology, awe inspiring in how pain staking it is as hand drawn, detailed work. Secondly, the music by Joe Hisaishi and Isaku Fujita, even the cheesy eighties synth rock in later segments, is also going to be excellent. Hisaishi is well known for his work with Studio Ghibli, and (surprisingly) 'Beat' Takashi Kitano, and Robot Carnival allows him to be diverse to match each of the segments'' variety of tones.

From https://i1.wp.com/psychodrivein.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/
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Franken's Gears

Director and Scenario: Koji Morimoto

One figure who has made his living on shorts and anthologies is Koji Morimoto, who is well regarded but through a career not made by series or television, but short length productions for the most part. His most well regarded work is a segment in Memories (1995), a more famous Otomo involved anthology, called Magnetic Rose which was written by the late auteur Satoshi Kon. Morimoto also has made his name co-founding Studio 4°C, which allowed him to make many of his own short work through them as much as bring the likes of Masaaki Yuasa into the world.

Franken's Gears is an atmospheric piece based, as you guess it, on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein where a mad scientist brings a robot to life through lightning. It's a purely mood related piece, entirely without dialogue like all but two segments, which relishes (even fetishes) the intricate and detailed animated work. Knowing every gear involved animators having to take hours, even weeks, to complete emphasises that animation, above even the best of live action cinema, is a craft in itself where even purely genre or visceral pleasures are worth framing for a gallery.

From https://www.toonzone.net/wp-content/
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Deprive

Director and Scenario: Hidetoshi Ōmori

Likewise an action sci-fi short, in which a robot goes to rescue a human girl from another group by evil robots, gains more worth when animated with this level of quality. What loses personality if in CGI in live action, where it is now blurred into a generic template found over many films, is something beautiful when it's this vividly coloured with intricate action scenes. Ōmori hasn't directed a lot at all - barring stuff like a golfing TV series and, grimly, a piece of the Urotsukidôji franchise in 2002 called New Saga when the notorious hentai franchise finally died - but in key animation, character design etc. he is prolific and even working on favourites like Kill La Kill (2013-14) in the current decade.

Out of segments, it's one of two which feels like the eighties onscreen, but that's not a detriment as, aesthetically, it feels right to be on the cusp of cheese but awesome at the same time, working out a fine balance as a result in a short enough time for this time stamping to not be a detraction. The rock guitar soundtrack, the giant robot terrorising the hero at the end, all of which an argument that this type of escapist entertainment can be as artistically rewarding as the art house work when it's this well made. In fact, without dialogue, it both makes a great case for action as an art form and feels like the best music video in need of a heavy metal remix.

From https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRnpZRYUMAAoiys.jpg

Presence

Director and Scenario: Yasuomi Umetsu

Voice Cast: Kohji Moritsugu as the Protagonist; Junko Terada as the Girl; Keiko Hanagata as the Granny; Kumiko Takizawa as the Daughter / Small Mecha

One of the two segments with dialogue, Umetsu takes a potentially offensive idea of a male inventor, in a steampunk future with a mix of industrial revolution aesthetic with eighties sci-fi, who decides to build a female robot as his idealised woman. It's a risky theme to tackle, as he is deliberately creating a woman in vast contrast to his career orientated wife, but thankfully even when it leads to the ending, where he disappears into his fantasy (or an actual escape into happiness) as an old man, it's done with immense psychological complexity, deliberately drawn out and slow burn. He is, visually, depicted as childish with his collection of mechanical toys, becoming disturbed when his robot woman starts to exhibit emotions, and the segment does run with the material carefully as a result.

Yasuomi Umetsu is sadly someone viewed in the notoriety of his work. He has pornographic animation in his career, but the really controversial work (and the one he is still known the most for) is Kite (1998), which is arguably notorious for problematic sexual content involving its lead female character. Material which has had the film banned in some countries. Enough for a director's cut to exist, his preferred version, which is actually shorter as it excises this problematic material. Which nonetheless, in whatever version was available, became a sizable hit in American anime culture with a bit of popular recognition, enough that out of all possible anime, it's one of the few to have a live action adaptation starring Samuel L. Jackson.

What Presence, as my first Umetsu anime, also shows however is that, if he wasn't known for Kite and other titles, he'd be known as  an incredible character designer and animator, an insane perfectionist who might've been a nightmare for some to work with but, when the results are like his segment in Robot Carnival, leads to him making one of the best segments just for how incredibly well made it is even among an anthology with exceptional animation and production quality. The look of the segment, including a little world building in its steampunk robot world. The moment of humour that cuts between its serious drama, with a robotic man getting his head stolen by kids. The intricate and realistic character designs especially of the robot girl which would have taken days if not more to perfect, Umetsu's style here that are someone who jars against tight work schedules but with wonderful results. An insane level of detail and character movement which is incredible. As a result, alongside with how well it deals with a tricky subject matter, Presence is my favourite of the Robot Carnival shorts, making Umetsu's reputation for troubling porn and transgressive material tragic when he could've spent his career more on material like this.

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Starlight Angel

Director and Scenario: Hiroyuki Kitazume

After the severity of Umetsu's segment, the other contender for the most eighties of the segments appears, not a surprise as, known more as an animator/manga author/character designer, Hiroyuki Kitazume made his reputation in the eighties especially through the Gundam franchise. The tale of a young woman who, at a robot themed theme park, has her heart broken only for a mechanical employee to try to return her lost necklace back, it's a simple tale told entirely in visuals, again the music video style of other segments found including a virtual reality ride that is drastically effected by her emotional state. Starlight is as well made, regardless of its visible time stamping to the eighties, and is helped to stand out by its optimistic and cheery tone, infectious in the right frame of mind. If anything Joe Hisaishi's synthesizers here border the line between sweet and ridiculous the most, managing to find the right balance that it's the former instead of the later.

From https://images3.imgbox.com/a5/44/aavvY5fZ_o.png

Cloud

Director and Scenario: Manabu Ōhashi (as Mao Lamdo)

All the segments, barring one, are very accessible. Cloud is the sole exception which is an experimental animated piece. Its creator Manabu Ōhashi began all the way back in the early sixties, on the likes of Astro Boy, and continued for at least over fifty years in the industry, the kind of figure unfairly maligned (even by the likes of myself) because he is more known for working on such work not as the director or creator but someone who first started as an inbetweener and went from there.

Cloud is not necessarily going to be a favourite for many, but I'm the kind of fan of unconventional filmmaking who loved this segment, my second favourite of the anthology. Cloud is tentatively a retelling of the Pinocchio story only with the entirety of the short being a robot boy walking past tableaus of elaborate, gorgeously penned scratchboard drawings of clouds, mushroom clouds of war and diving figures of the wind, one who turns him into a real boy at the ending. It is a literal experiment, in its music and in its unconventional look, of moving backgrounds as the boy is mainly walking to the left of the screen, fragmenting of the panels for dynamic close-ups used occasionally. Cloud is utterly indulgent but a beautiful, worthy inclusion. Considering the man behind it as well, its also a testament to Robot Carnival that it let many individuals not known as directors helm a piece entirely of their own tests, something that has to be praised when, problematically, the anime industry can be difficult in letting people helm their own projects or letting new talent develop.

From https://camstheothersideofanimation.files.
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Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: Westerner's Invasion

Director and Scenario: Hiroyuki Kitakubo

Voice Cast: Kei Tomiyama as Sankichi; Chisa Yokoyama as Yayoi; Katsue Miwa as Fukusuke; Kaneto Shiozawa as Denjirō;Toku Nishio as Daimaru; James R. Bowers as John Jack Vorkarson III

Robot Carnival, having a significantly better sense of tonal shifting than most anthologies, wisely followed the sedate, experimental Cloud with a farce. Hiroyuki Kitakubo is a fascinating figure as his directorial filmography has big and very well regarded titles within it - Black Magic M-66 (1987), Roujin Z (1991), the original 1993 animated adaptation of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Boy (1995) - but being incredible small, finishing with his most well known project, Blood: The Last Vampire  (2000) [reviewed HERE], only to never sit in the directorial seat again past the year 2000. A shame as, able to juggle the clever and unconventional satire of Roujin Z to giving a technical experiment like Blood: The Last Vampire enough character to warrant a franchise, he is a great example of a working anime director just from those examples of drastically different genres and tones. Strange Tales of Meiji... is my third favourite entry of Robot Carnival. It's the most distinct, set in Meiji era Japan with the robots powered by steam and being built from wood and brick, itself a unique take on the material as, depicting adolescents hijacking their town's festival robot to take on an American one, it feels like it predates the tropes of anime that would grow in the nineties onwards, and could've sustained a longer work unlike the other segments.

The sense of being ahead of its time is found in the main cast, anticipating the next decade with its headstrong lead who is both noble but an idiot, the potential female love interest who slaps him about in a love-hate relationship and various miscreants in their fold who are try to defend their town in a ramshackle way, destroying as much as the invader does. The unconventionality of these robots also brings a curious spin on the mecha genre that could've been rewarding to see, as even simple things found in futuristic giant robot stories are more complicated, having to negotiate a time where firepower consists of a cannon that has to be aimed perfectly and a firework launcher. It's a comedy which is energetic and is also meant to parody its own characters' rah-rah, patriotic enthusiasm, not only in the leads destroying buildings in their mistakes but the American invading them, despite being voiced by an actor who speaks English as a first language, giving his dialogue the appropriately wooden, borderline incomprehensible "Engrish" quality for added amusement. (Controversially, hindsight that this was done decades ago in the era of anime on video, Streamline Pictures in the US decided, to contrast this, by giving the Japanese characters exaggerated "Oriental" accents). Altogether, when the rest of the anthology is not outright comedy in the slightest, this is a nice contrast to the rest which succeeds.

From https://www.ganriki.org/media/2014/robot-carnival-162.jpg

Chicken Man and Red Neck

Director and Scenario: Takashi Nakamura

Takashi Nakamura, who would go on to direct an underrated (and sadly maligned) animated feature called A Tree of Palme (2002), closes Robot Carnival, barring Otomo's closing credits animation, with this nightmarish tale of robot invasion, absorbing all machinery into a horrifying mass with a city, and the gangly man on a scooter who gets in their way. Chicken Man... is an excuse for elaborate production design, creations from ordinary objects distorted and with the time and budget available to elaborate on them into incredibly strange and imaginative scenes, mainly set up as an extended chase with a peculiar, almost Rube Goldberg levels of pointlessness and exaggeration throughout. It's a nice end to an incredible underrated production which I have waited years to see, one that lived up to my expectations. Even without the growing fondness for anthologies, Robot Carnival is an applaudable production which deserves more recognition. It is, also, a very good way to introduce people into anime, able to be separated into bit sized segments or watched all at once, the tonal and genre shifts a great advantage to it as, even if you hated or didn't like any of the segments, they are short enough to not be a nuisance and followed by others which vary in tones and style. Like the best of what anthologies should produce, it's a feast for the eyes and creativity.