Robot Carnival

Robot Carnival

This movie is a series of vignettes of how humanity created robots; android robots that have self-awareness. Fast forward thousands of years into the future, robots and humans live together and share emotional feelings. It asks the everlasting question if robots can have a personality and have meaningful relationships and care for humans. And a deeper or unique twist on that concept is the question of if humans truly care for robots like humans. This being Anime, it is highly fantastic in style and concept with no shortage of creativity. Many scenes remind me of the original 80's "Transformers" TV show as they are lots of robots acting like humans. Overall, I thought this would be more cohesive. It felt very disjointed. Many good nuggets and characters in a couple vignettes but they didn't stick with them long enough. I would love to see further exploration into a few stories as others felt very thin by comparison.

This is a Fantasia-like anthology of robots. The most noble are Presence, Deprive, and Nightmare. Nightmare is the story of an evil, cybernetic overlord that rises one night and unleashes its robotic servants. Deprive is a science fiction tale of a young girl who has been abducted by an invading army of robots, and only a mysterious cyborg can help her. Presence is about a young toy-maker who makes a beautiful, female cyborg. When she becomes "a bit too real", he destroys her, only to be haunted by her spirit for the rest of his life. I really enjoyed this film and the many short stories it had to offer. (Makes me wish we had more animes like this.) If I had to pick which one was my favourite segment it would probably be Presence, the one with the mad scientist, the one at the theme park, Nightmare and Deprive. What makes this unique is how majority of the segments are music only which does give the audience freedom of what the characters are thinking, feeling and saying. There are two which have talking in. The art style and animation has definitely aged well and looks even more beautiful on blu-Ray quality. The music was outstanding The dub was excellent too. If you are into anthology anime films I think you might enjoy this.

ROBOT CARNIVAL is a breath of fresh air from the bloated, overdone, exploitative sagas Anime is known for and presents us instead with a series of short films which have nothing to do with each other except that they all star robots. I especially like the intro with the mechanized carnival running over the village...heh heh heh. Very nice, well-animated and leaves a lasting impression on the veiwer. A must-have for anyone who likes Japanese animation or the very curious.

For me the best parts of the anthology were "Presence" and "Cloud": Both were quite beautifully made and honestly I would love to see a full-lenght feature film inspired by those particular shorts. The other segments were very nicely animated, and fun to watch. "Chicken Man and Red Neck" was a neat homage to the Night on Bald Mountain segment from Fantasia. The opening and ending segment directed by Katsuhiro Otomo were good too, and had a similar feeling to his short comics. Personally, I think this anthology deliver what it promises: Don't expect a narrative-heavy film, much less expect it to be anything like "Akira". Instead enjoy it as some sort of atypical, fun ride, with some of the nicest animation the 80s could offer.

Animated anthology films are few and far between. Its a shame - few feature length films can offer so much wonder. Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, Neo-Tokyo, and Memories are must-watches for any fan of the art. Robot Carnival isn't well-known, but its one of my favorite films. Robot Carnival is special not only for the few restrictions enforced on the directors, but because it has a single restriction - all the shorts must be about robots. And each short provides a different perspective on the sci-fi trope. Each with a different art style, a different genre, and a different tone, not a single story repeated. Its a very intriguing film. You never know what's around the corner. Some of the shorts will be alright, others amazing. Its not as consistently good as other 9-star films, but its such a breath of fresh air. The discussions with friends afterwords make Robot Carnival a great party movie. The shorts are so different from one another, no two people will have the same opinion on the film. Robot Carnival was an early discovery of mine - I learned about it by watching a sci-fi channel trailer for Lensman, a VHS anime I bought for a dollar. To find something so beautiful and unique, yet so unknown...it has a permanent place in my heart. If you're a fan of animation, you need to see this.

Robot Carnival (1987) is a movie that I recently watched on Tubi. This film is made up of a series of short stories about a futuristic society where robots are as big a part of society as humans. In some instances that is for good and in some instances, there are risks to the future of the human race because of the evolution. This movie is directed by nine directors and contains the voices of Bob Bergen (Akira), Eddie Frierson (Doctor Dolittle), Barbara Goodson (Akira), Steve Kramer (Akira), Tom Wyner (Ghost in the Shell) and Michael McConnohie (Vampire Hunter D). While some segments are better than others, this movie overall is absolutely fantastic. The science fiction elements are tremendous and the animation and universe really sucks you in. Some of the segments are really artistic and the entire movie is unique. The first half of the film has no speaking but the second half works dialogue into the stories. The soundtrack is also outstanding. Overall, this is an underrated anime gem that is an absolute must see. I would score this a strong 9/10.

This film I feel is another under the radar gem, it was really popular for it's time but as time went on it's became forgotten. This film is also a childhood relic of mine, it was one of the first films that actually got me into the Japanese anime genre, if you can believe that. When I saw this film it just blew me away from the animation style, music used, context, it wasn't anything I've ever seen before. Watching it now I still think the film holds up, especially in animation. It's also one of the only anime anthologies out there which are unfortunately really scarce, the only other one I can think of is "Memories" but that's a different story. This film to me is sort of "Fantasia" for the 90's which is cool, because like "Fantasia" it was basically anthology of animation shorts correlating with music pieces, and that's exactly what this film does. You could say this plays also similar to Issac Assmov's sci-fi anthologies since his stories always had to do with humans coexisting with robots or robots acting and becoming human. The animation I think is great, each of them have different styles that fit the context, I still think it looks really good despite how many years it's been. The music is great, I feel most of the scores used are memorable. There are many stories but I'll just talk about three that are my favorites. Starlight Angel: This is basically a fairy tale but in sci-fi form which is great because it's a combo of two genres I love. It's a typical story of the right guy saving a beautiful girl but it's really in the execution that makes it stand out. I really like the amusement park, it's practically Disneyland of the future. I like the character designs which are beautiful, even in there expressions of emotion which are just fantastic, despite not hearing what their saying we understand exactly what their dialog perfectly from their expressions; in a way it just goes to show you don't always need verbal dialog to deliver perfect dialog. The score is just beautiful, it's my favorite in the film because it has an adventurous and romantic quality to it. Deprive: This is another great one, it's also in a way another fairy tale if you want to think of it that way, once again right guy saving the woman he loves from evil. Though this one it's more of an shonan actioneer approach but it is fraking awesome. I really love the action sequences and the choreography is spot on, it's just awesome just seeing the protagonist knock the crap out of a lot of evil robots that are cool looking their all unique in design, let alone practically bigger than him like seeing him jump on a bunch of robots practically stomping on them like Gomba's from the video game "Super Mario Bros". In a way this story is sort of an anime version of pulp comic book hero "Magnus Robot Fighter" since the protagonist sort of is like Magnus, armed with super strength and martial arts to trash the robots, seeing this story makes me wonder why the hell an anime/animated series of that comic book franchise hasn't been made yet. A Tale of Two Robots: This one is my absolute favorite, it is just fraking hilarious. It's basically mecha anime but in the 18th century which is awesome . I really like the designs of each of the mecha are unique, my favorite one is the one from the Japaneze side which looks awesome, it's practically a giant walking Bogotá. I even like how they operate from the physics and technology they had access to in that century it feels right and makes this sort of a steam punk tale since that genre was always about old technology advanced further. I really like the fights which are fun, however it's really more both character factions that really drive the tale because both the characters that command the mecha are total nitwits. It's just hilarious how both are so determined to take out the other, showing how indifferent both are. Well that's all I have to say, Robot Carnival like any Carnival is a variety of fun. Rating: 4 stars

A man from my old film days recommended this film to me. I took chance on it, and the recommendation delivered. What we have here is a poetic expression of tales woven together to form a tapestry about an extension of ourselves; the robot. The robot is brought to us through a visual feast of respectable animation that shows us worlds and times beyond our imagination, and how those arenas and their players might play out. Each one is touching in its own way, and delivers a nice message that can be appreciated by all. Whether you like action, some youthful romance, the tale of years, comedy, or just plain adventure, this film is for you. Reminder, this is an anthology, so the pacing is going to be a little slow. But the showcase revealed to the curious minded audience that has a hankerin for good "Japanimation" will be very pleased. Me, I happen upon the film a year or two after it was released. I then bought a VHS in the mid to late 90s, and happened upon a special edition DVD from Japan when the film was first reissued. The DVD gives a magnificent picture and overall rendering of this incredibly beautiful film. I'm not certain I would call it family friendly, but kids over a certain age (pre-teens) and maybe just a little bit younger, might appreciate it. There is some mild violence and just some plain wacky and bizarre situations that might spook really young viewers, so guidance is suggested here. But, boys and girls and parents alike should find this an interesting watch. Me, I like it on its own merits. I think it's an intimate look at how people might interface with technology in a variety of settings. This is anime before anime became an international sensation; i.e. during the time when the US, Canada and the UK were the primary export markets for Japanese films. Please watch and enjoy this film. You won't regret it.

Almost every story in this film was very well done and enjoyable. I just wish I could get a hold of a DVD of this fine film so I can do a better review of it as there are a lot of the stories I can not remember to clearly as it has been a while since I last saw this film. I remember it starting with a bang as a giant robot carnival comes to town and begins to blow up everything in sight and this is also part of the ending tale too. There is a story of a woman kidnapped and a mysterious young man comes to save her, I enjoyed this one as the music was very good and this one had good action as well. Another one I remember is a Frankenstein one that is the shortest of the bunch if I remember correctly. Then there is one where a girl goes to a fair and somehow a ride she goes on ends up as being an action sequence. The funniest one involves two robots as a mad engineer does battle with kids using what was intended to be a float for a fair. Then there is a strange one involving a guy and this female bot, this story made the least sense, but I am guessing a lot of it was cut as I watched it on TBS so I am guessing it would make a lot more sense if seen in its entirety. The final one I remember is one about a robot that looked a bit like Mega Man just walking through the clouds, very simple but well done. I think there was more, but this is all I remember, like I said I would love to get a hold of the DVD so I can watch it all again and uncut this time.