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This week we travel back in time to 1986, the year some anime lovers say it all began. 1986 heralded the birth of the first anime anthology ever produced – Manie-Manie Labyrinth Story, better known as Neo Tokyo. What makes this, the grand-daddy of anime anthologies, such a gem? Read on...
Neo Tokyo, the collaboration between three of the biggest names in anime history – Rintaro (of Metropolis fame), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll) has a run time of only 50 minutes, but is nonetheless chock-full of goodies.
Labyrinth-Labyrinthos, Rintaro’s meta-story is the first of the three shorts, framing and contextualizing the other two stories in a seemingly implausible dreamscape. Labyrinth-Labyrinthos opens with rich, water-coloured backdrops of almost Dali-esque brilliance and a symphonic musical score, cuts to a Noh-like stage, and shifts its style and perspective several times more (there’s even a videogame-like sequence) as Sachi’s game of hide-and-seek (or maybe cat-and-mouse) with her cat Cicerone draws her into a fantastic world hidden in the bowels of a grandfather clock.
Sachi - The creepy, pint-sized protagonist of Labyrinth Labyrinthos
And her much abused cat It’s a journey accompanied by a superb soundscape – in fact, the aural experience is the high point of this surreal pastiche here so crank up your speakers – culminating in Sachi’s arrival at a circus tent where she watches, enrapt, as the next tale unfolds.
Here's something you won't see at the circus everyday - ghouls and goblins galore The shift into The Running Man is seamless. It’s dark and melancholic, with a distinct sepia tint that captures the fatalistic noir chic of the Death Circus, a futuristic racing circuit where drivers blaze across the tarmac in souped-up hovercrafts. The concept is simple enough – we follows a reporter on one of his magazine assignments to profile racing champion Zack Hugh, and how he unwittingly discovers the reason behind Zack’s success – psychic powers.
You can tell he's angry Kawajiri’s take on violence and realism shines through here, especially in Zack’s facial expressions and that of his numerous victims. Gnarled veins, dilated pupils, contorted facial muscles, blood and gore – he wields these tools with panache, painting this tragedy in the way only a master can. As Zack’s tale concludes, we transition to Construction #444, deep in a swampy morass in South America, where feckless salaryman Sugioka has been tasked to deliver a Construction Cancellation Order to a robotic workforce.
It's Man vs Machine in Construction Cancellation Order, Otomo throws us into the story right away, using non-diagetic dialogue to narrate this short’s premise, and carries this tale to its conclusion by playing up cyberpunk elements – elements he refines in Akira, his most famous masterpiece to date. The robots with their umbilical cord-like wires and glowing visor slits, the massive, shadowy computer core with its undulating appendages, and Sugioka’s meek office worker-turned-avenger all contribute to making this segment what it is. Never mind that the ending is a tad abrupt, or the twist in this comedy of errors predictable. It’s still pretty damned good, and more than a little funny. Overall, Neo Tokyo is a mixed bag. The three shorts are disparate entities, and while they succeed at showcasing the directors’ individual techniques, the anthology as a whole is weakened by its lack of unifying vision. Still, there’s no denying that without Neo Tokyo blazing the trail, later anthologies such as Robot Carnival, Memories, or Genius Party wouldn’t be possible. It’s also a rare treat for die-hard fans – Neo Tokyo is a slice of history, and few works from the ‘80s come remotely close in terms of visual or aural artistry. |
