Because of my 25th anniversary as a Vera employee, I was asked to propose a film. The title I went for is the anime Steamboy, a high-pressure steampunk spectacle with the underlying theme of how to prevent revolutionary technology from being used for the wrong purposes. Director Katsuhiro Otomo, best known as the creator of Akira, and Sunrise took no less than ten years to make this film, en passant breaking the record for the most expensive anime to date. The resulting movie truly shows the massive effort made.
Great Britain, Manchester, 1866. Young inventor Ray Steam receives a package from his grandfather Lloyd containing an enigmatic spherical device, complete with technical data and the warning to take good care of it. Soon trouble finds its way to our hero in the form of the appearance of henchmen employed by the O’Hara Foundation, tasked with getting their hands on the super-powerful compact steam engine. Grandpa also appears and tells Ray that the development of this Steam Ball led to the death of Ray’s father Eddy, followed by the urgent request to flee and deliver the device to the famous engineer Robert Stephenson. This fails, however; both Ray and the Steam Ball fall into the hands of the O’Hara Foundation subordinates and are sent to London. There Ray meets the spoiled granddaughter of Foundation leader Charles O’Hara St Johns, the foppish Scarlet. He also comes into contact with his surprisingly alive yet heavily mechanized father Eddy, who is working with O’Hara on the Steam Castle, an ambitious project meant to bring enlightenment to mankind. Fueled by his father’s vision, Ray decides to help complete the gargantuan machine, while also developing a capricious friendship with Scarlet. Before long it becomes apparent that everything is not as it seems, though…
– Nanne
IMDb
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