Ten years in the making, Steamboy is the most expensive anime ever made, and it marks the return of Katsuhiro Otomo, the man whose Akira introduced Japanese animation to a mainstream American audience.

Set in 1866, the film follows three generations of the Steam Family. Grandpa Lloyd Steam (voiced by Patrick Stewart) and his son Eddie (Alfred Molina) work for the American O'Hara Company and develop technology to contain steam at pressures previously thought impossible. However, the two older Steams fall out over the use of the new technology and Lloyd sends the heart of their invention, the Steam-ball, to Ray (Anna Paquin), his grandson and an inventor in his own right.

Soon O'Hara's goons show up on Ray's doorstep, tearing the place apart looking for the Steam-ball, forcing Ray to flee. There then follows a battle in which Ray tries to keep the Steam-ball away from his father, who would let science run unchecked, and Robert Stevenson, who would place science under the command of the state, Meanwhile, the British government and the O'Hara company slug it out next to the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition.

Artistically, this film is initially very impressive. The scenes of Manchester at the height of the industrial revolution and the huge clouds of steam belching from the Victorian machines are spellbinding, and the washed-out color scheme of browns and beiges combine with the unusually unstylized character designs to produce an anime unlike any seen before. The film's English-language dub even has an all-star cast with a slightly punchier script to work with. On first appearances, this film is utterly stunning.

However. . . .

Steamboy's central plot is a rather thin MacGuffin-chase with a load of explosions. This is obviously a conscious decision, allowing Otomo more room to explore the film's issue. The film is essentially a parable concerning humanity's attitude to science, so the characters are all simple representations of different perspectives. As a result, the film is incredibly talky and occasionally preachy, and the characters are paper-thin. A film set up that way can work if the ideas expressed are interesting. Sadly, they are not.

While Otomo clearly feels that there is something wrong with humanity's current attitude to science, he is unable to put his finger on what the problem is or put forward a valid alternative. Ray is clearly supposed to be his mouthpiece and a bridge between the various worldviews, but, tellingly, he never articulates what his own beliefs are. He just flies around as things explode. The result is a film that lurches from witless philosophy to mindless action without a working plot or sub-text to glue the whole thing together. Even the performances fail to elevate this film, as the actors are simply not given enough to work with.

There are those who might feel that the beauty of the images and animation alone make Steamboy worth watching. But, for me, those things are simply not enough.

Despite an astonishingly length development process, Steamboy's production values show a serious lack of research and attention to detail. Otomo makes the kind of cultural, historical and geographical errors that could have been avoided by a glance a book about Victorian Britain, or even a Web site. Furthermore, his designs are uninspired and uninspiring when compared with the period designs of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells (who, unlike Otomo, didn't have a hundred years of science fiction to draw on). Even the Steam-ball and Steam-castle themselves are vacuous quasi-magical objects, thereby undermining any verisimilitude and proving that Otomo's interest in Victorian tech is only skin deep.

Steamboy is a deeply troubled film and the blame can clearly be laid at the feet of Otomo as director, creator and co-writer. His depiction of Victorian England is as insubstantial as the clouds of vapor that litter the screen. An examination by viewers with even a passing interest in Victoriana will reveal Steamboy to be pretty but ultimately shallow. This shallowness runs through the film like a dose of salts, affecting the plot (holey), the script (dire), the characterization (thin) and the issues with which Otomo tries to engage (lightweight). A creator with such a pedigree, such creative power, such a huge budget and such a rich subject matter should have done better than this. Steamboy is decidedly second rate.

DVDetails

The DVD boasts that it is the director's cut because the film is over two hours long but was trimmed for its U.S. cinematic release. Given that (a) you can't buy a DVD of the cinema version and (b) the film's far too flabby anyway, this is not much of an extra beyond allowing people in the U.S. to see the same film everybody else sees.

Steamboy's pretty-but-vacant feel also extends to the extras, as the focus is clearly on the artwork. Onionskins and production drawings give us an insight into the creative process and how the artists and animators build up the images layer by layer, while the end-credits montage and the three-screen landscape studies allow us to revisit the prettier moments of the film.

More substantially, the DVD comes with an interview with Otomo himself. However, it is rather on the short side, and he doesn't seem to have much to say for himself other than to repeat that if you use computers it takes longer than doing things by hand, and that if there's a sequel he hopes his production company gets to make it but he's not going anywhere near it. Obviously this makes him sound like someone who's glad the ten years are finally over so that he can move on, which is refreshing and understandable.

The final extra is a short featurette interviewing the English language cast and it's fairly standard film PR guff.

On the whole, a rather disappointing haul of extras by today's standards.

The Movie Itself: 3/10
The DVD Features: 3/10