Robot Carnival

Following my recent Tarantino marathon, I’ve decided to do one for Katsuhiro Otomo, certainly one of my favorite creators of all time. I plan on watching all the movies that he’s directed – and that includes his participation in anthologies – as well as the ones he’s listed as screenwriter (Roujin Z, Metropolis). I kicked things off tonight with Robot Carnival, an interesting anthology that came out in 1987. I do sort of remember watching it a long time ago, but I’d pretty much forgotten all of the segments. Otomo contributes the opening and ending segments only, but they’re quite neat. As for the rest of the shorts, they all – as the title of the anthology suggests – revolve around robots, and although they all have something interesting about them, some are definitely better than others (I especially liked Franken’s Gear, Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: Westerner’s Invasion, and Chicken Man and Red Neck). This Wikipedia entry does a good job of describing each. I’m off to a good start.