Tekkon Kinkreet

Reviewed by Carolyn Garner

Sony Pictures

Based on English Dubbed and Subtitled versions

Rated R (MPAA)

What it’s (basically) all about: Two demented street kids, Black and White, watch over Treasure Town, a colorful, yet dark and twisted, part of the world.  Black, the pessimistic realist, and White, the naïve optimist, have no one but each other to depend on.  They keep the other street gangs and the yakuza in line until a developer appears who wants to turn Treasure Town’s grimy streets into an amusement park for the rest of the world.  Black and White’s home begins to crumble around them as yakuza, assassins, and gangs come to blows.  And then the trouble really starts…

Nitty Gritty: Tekkonkinkreet is approximately 111 minutes long and is presented in anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  It is mastered in High Definition Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Closed captioning is available.  Spoken languages choices include English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese.  Subtitles available include English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.  If you have autoplay enabled on your DVD player, you’ll see an ad chunk for Sony’s Blu-Ray Disc, followed by a preview for Paprika, This can be skipped, if you want to go straight to the menu.  The menu is animated with a flickering windowpane of scenes from the movie, backed by a selection from the soundtrack.  You can select a scene, go to the Language or Special Features sections, or watch more previews, including Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Memories, Metropolis, Tokyo Godfathers, Steamboy, and Storm Hawks.  Special Features include “Filmmakers Commentary,” “A Conversation with Director Michal Arias and British Music Duo, Plaid,” and “The Making of Tekkonkinkreet – Director Michael Arias’s 300 Day Diary.”

The DVD packaging for Tekkonkinkreet is unremarkable, although the front cover does feature an all-in-one, multi-colored view of Treasure Town fronted by the supporting characters, with Black and White taking center position.  The back cover has a small blurb beside a bird’s eye view of the city with Black and White above it all.  Several award nominations and festival selections are listed, as are the special features.  The lower half of the cover is given over to production credits and disc specifications.  There is no insert card or reversible cover.

Survey says: This disc is rated R for some violent and disturbing images and brief sexuality.  Some of the fight sequences were on the graphic side, especially the first confrontation between Black and the yakuza and the encounters with the alien assassins.  Both Black and White’s brushes with madness might be considered disturbing by some viewers.  The brief sexuality was limited to a few teasing scenes at Ganpachi’s strip club and a conversation between Kimura and his girlfriend in bed.  There’s also a bit of non-sexual male nudity in a scene in the local bathhouse.  Some of the characters say “damn” a couple of times, but that’s about the extent of naughty language.  Because of the R rating, I ended up putting this title in the adult section, along with a recent reprint of the original manga, Black & White.

Personal ad: After seeing a trailer on another DVD last year and hearing the buzz about how awesome it was, I wanted to like Tekkonkinkreet, I really, really did.  The colors and the details of Treasure Town and the unusual character designs made me want something new.  Of course, the artwork and design are excellent, as was to be expected from American director Michael Arias, a former computer art programmer whose cel-shading software is now used by Ghibli and Studio 4ºC.  But there’s something emotionally uneven about TekkonKinkreet that’s a little disappointing.  If you get TekkonKinkreet for your collection, get a reprint of Black & White if you can, because the manga frames the whacked-out story in a more surrealistic way.

This is the second anime where I’ve watched both the dubbed and subtitled versions.  I also kept the subtitles on the English language version for a laugh.  There’s a ton of dialogue in this movie and it was interesting to hear English and Japanese spoken and reading the original English version of the script at the same time.  I liked the voices of both casts, although I think that Black (Kazunari Ninomiya) sounded more cynical in Japanese, while White (Kamali Minter) was more of gentle soul in English.