Reviewed - Sky Blue: This attractive Korean animation, an expensive attempt to muscle in on a market hitherto dominated by the Japanese, belongs to a particular school of dystopian cinema that pretends to disapprove of technology even as it fetishises guns, flying motor bikes, explosions and the digital systems required to render them. One can't help but think that the brains behind Sky Blue would be bored to death in the sylvan Arcadia their heroes seek.
Combining little bits of Metropolis with generous dollops of Akira, the film takes place in a polluted, rainy world with only one functioning city: a cool, technologically advanced limbo named - pause to marvel at the semantic ingenuity - Ecoban.
Shua, a rebel from the underworld that surrounds Ecoban, infiltrates the city's computer system; Jay, a member of the paramilitary police, investigates. It transpires that the two were once childhood friends. After a great deal of fannying about amid steam and sunsets, Jay is won over to the cause of ecological terrorism.
As is often the case with Japanese anime, an enormous amount of effort has been put into complicating the plot while almost none has been expended on fleshing out characters. Shua tries hard to keep his adopted brother away from the gangs in the slums. Jay has to cope with a fellow officer who has unprofessionally fond feelings for her. One Dr Noah, striving to stand upright beneath the considerable metaphorical burden of his surname, dreams of a magical island named, would you believe, Gibraltar. (His is full of trees and streams, rather than angry, Daily Telegraph-reading retirees.) With so few rounded personalities about the place, it eventually becomes hard to care who is doing what to whom.
Despite all that the film never quite becomes boring. The animation, a mix of traditional 2-D techniques and contemporary digital wizardry, has an epic grandeur that offers a jolt of wonder each time torpor threatens. Just don't expect to be properly moved.
Donald Clarke
