as one of a privileged few, i figured it was my duty to both watch and brag shamelessly about watching the new film from the dude who brought you akira. that's right - it's steamboy - and right off the bat i'll just say that i'm not going to make any puns such as 'well in the second half it ran out of steam...' like half the reviewers i've heard.

this is clearly a great film which is not exceptional, which kinda reminds you of akira, doesn't it? the regular animation is vintage otomo - whose pen seems more at home sketching cool modes of transport than people. which isn't a knock, because if ever there was a movie about locomotion, this baby is it.

the plot at first seems simple, then adds a few layers of complexity, and finally settles on cool action, which is fine by me. protagonist is a young boy who comes from a long line of inventors, two of which return from abroad with a mysterious new type of ultra-capacity steam. naturally there are bad guys, and cool weapons, and everything is in a quasi-victorian england so you get bizarre philosophical rants mixed in with political treatises on how best to maintain an empire.

it kinda is a kick-ass version of laputa except there's absolutely no magical quality about it, and humor, um, well akira wasn't funny, was it? in the end i highly recommend watching steamboy just for the mechanical beauty of so many cogs and gears powered by steam...