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Column by Scott Green
Anime Nation notes that Sony's Tekkonkinkreet site now hosts a streaming trailer of the film here. The movie opens in New York and LA on Friday, July 13. Michael Arias helmed the Studio 4°C adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto's manga, marking the first time a non-Japanese director presided over a major anime film. Studio 4°C's innovative animation has so far mostly yielded short works such as the Digital Juice, Sweat Punch and upcoming Genius Party collections, as well as music videos for Utada Hikaru, Ayumi Hamasaki and Ken Ishii. Like the studios' previous full length film, Mind Game, these works have been unfortunately, unavailable in North America. So far, studio’s best exposure to North American audiences has been the Animatrix shorts, where Arias worked on the Beyond and Second Renaissance segments and Tekkon Kinkreet screenwriter Anthony Weintraub served as story consultant.
Stripped from its implementation, the high concept of a yin yang partnership of orphans who patrol the roof tops of their home city, brutally fending off encroaching gangsters does not sound entirely out of line with anime action standards. However, through this pair, one of which is vicious and hyper aware of the reality around him, and one which is sleep walking through child-like innocence, the story offers a marvelous, visual exploration of the urban spirit world. One look at how the movie adapts Matsumoto's European comic inspired character design and it should be evident that this work is far divorced from the ghetto of frequently visited genres and ideas that dominates popular anime. The other aspect of this challenge from the source material that should yield a unique experience in the animated adaptation is the work's architectural creativity. There is a real chimera quality to the buildings and cityscapes that look like the results of a severe multi-cultural clash had time to settle without losing its expressiveness. If you appreciate fusion design like Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira or Paul Pope's comics, the precision and healthy dose of inspired strangeness here should be a real treat. Matsumoto's original manga was released in North America by Viz under the title "Black and White." This was serialized in the lamented Pulp anthology before being collected across three, now out of print, volumes. However, the publisher is now planning to re-collected the manga in a single volume edition under the title Tekkon Concrete.
