Tekkonkinkreet (2006)

Tekkonkinkreet (2006)

Directed by: Michael Arias

Starring: Kazunari Ninomiya, Yû Aoi, Yûsuke Iseya

A lot of people will group animated films as if they were all the same genre just based on their medium, but that’s really kind of a weird assumption we all get growing up with cartoons. We think they’re for kids just because they’re animated, and that everything is going to be Cinderella or Aladdin. People might make an exception with anime, thinking that it’s all the same too because it’s a different style of animation, but it’s just as diverse as anything else. For instance, Tekkonkinkreet is basically an art film. It’s confusing and weird and at the heart of it, the plot isn’t as important as characters interactions with each other. Also it’s anime so there are a lot of fast-paced action scenes. Okay, I’m not immune to generalizations either, so sue me.

Two young kids, White and Black, terrorize the little city of Treasure Town as their own two-person gang. One is a streetwise tough, the other is completely insane, and together they have a happy little life on the streets. They start running into serious trouble once an international corporation sends some guys in to renovate Treasure Town, and this of course means killing these kids. They send wave after wave of professional killer at them, but all this does is waken the literal demons within.

I really liked the unique art style of Tekkonkinkreet. It’s fast-paced and cartoony, not really worrying about keeping proportions or anything like that. The first part of the movie is entertaining, when it’s just these two crazy kids running amok over town, but once it gets into the plot it really grinds down to a halt and gets pretty stereotypically “anime”. It turns out there’s a crazy powerful shadow demon half of the one kid and it gives him super powers needed to take out these super badass contract killers… it just doesn’t really fit in with the atmosphere they started out with. So overall, it’s a visual trip, and if you want to get all philosophical about some simple life and death concepts, it gets really heavy into that at the end too.