SeattleOtaku

After a long absense, out of the distant past (of 1987, our time) comes a grand spectacle, nine anime directors with nine shorts about robots compiled into one traveling Robot Carnival.  Some of the featured animators were relatively new at directing and continued on to design and direct other favorites, including others listed on this site (or soon will be…).  Much of the soundtrack was composed by Jo Hisaishi, best known for his close association with Studio Ghibli soundtracks as well.

While domestic and import releases are out of print, and the domestic cable showings of the early ’90s have long since stopped, Robot Carnival has become a treasure of obscurity.

Story Intro

A faded and torn poster blows off a wall and across a desert landscape, landing on the legs of an unsuspecting child during chores.  Recognizing what it refers to, the boy rushes into town and tries to warn the people (in universally-understood comic gibberish) of some impending doom, then runs on.  The townsfolk race to their homes, boarding them up, as a great shadow approaches.  The Robot Carnival has arrived, a tank-treaded behemoth that accompanies rampant destruction with mechanized music.  As a few survivors look on, the last we see of this town is rubble under giant tracks leading off into the desert.

The “Opening” described above and the “Closing/Epilogue” finale were directed by Atsuko Fukushima (an animator on the earlier Golgo 13: The Professional and Dagger of Kamui) and Katsuhiro Otomo (who’s best-known later works include Akira, Steamboy, and Memories).  Bookending the collection of shorts, these show the titular carnival and its effect on the population, even after it’s finally run down and all but forgotten.

“Franken’s Gear” features a Frankensteinian vision from Koji Morimoto (mechanical designer for Lensman and animator/director of the concert footage in Macross Plus, among many others).  During a lightning storm, a scientist creates a living robot that copies its master’s moves only too well.

In “Deprive”, directed by Hidekazu Ohmori (whose later works included the Guyver series and others), a cyborg tries to rescue a girl from an invading alien race.

“Presence” is one of the only two shorts here that include dialogue (other than the earlier moment of gibberish).  From Yasuomi Umetsu (creator of the Kite and Mezzo series), a scientist creates a living doll and abandons her when she begins to show emotion, but leaving her behind isn’t as easy as he thinks.

“Starlight Angel” was directed by Hiroyuki Kitazume (best known for character design in Mobile Suit Gundam’s Zeta Gundam and Char’s Counterattack works, the heavy-metal-inspired fantasy series Bastard!!, and others).  Here, a girl visits a robot amusement park with her friend and learns her boyfriend and friend are dating each other.  As she runs crying through the carnival, she’s followed by a park mascot who seeks to befriend her and save her from a menacing force.

“Cloud” is a somber montage of a young mechanical boy trudging through the world as history (and future) pass on behind him, directed by Mao Lamdo in a series of pencil-sketch animations.

Directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo (creator of Angel Cop and director of Golden Boy, Roujin Z, and Blood: The Last Vampire), “Strange Tale of Meiji Machines: Episode of the Red Haired Man’s Invasion” (US edit: “A Tale of Two Robots – Part 3: Foreign Invasion”) spoofs the giant-robot and classic city-destroying monster films with wood-and-brick robots in 19th-century Tokyo.  The only other short with actual dialogue, the English dub takes bad over-enunciated accents to a comedic level, even redubbing the already-English invader.

And in the Disney-inspired “Chicken Man and Red Neck” (US edit: “Nightmare”) by Takashi Nakamura (creator of Catnapped: The Movie and Fantastic Children), the city truly comes alive at night with only a single frightened human witness.

Other Notes

During the editing of the Streamline release, the shorts in the domestic release rearranged and had a few name changes:

• The kanji-title art shots were replaced by black-screen English texts.  Only the “Presence” and “Cloud” titles retain any kanji, as they were originally stylized with both kanji and English.  Others like “Starlight Angel” and “Deprive” show their English titles twice — likely to have a “standard” titling — first with Streamline’s black-screen titles then in the original piece’s already-English title art.
• Despite the oddly renamed “A Tale of Two Robots – Chapter 3: Foreign Invasion”, it is neither the third story in either version of the film, nor have there been earlier “chapters” of the story elsewhere, though the story does leave room for a sequel.
• “Closing” had the biggest edits: a still-shot montage of the Robot Carnival’s past was removed completely, as it included kanji of the artists’ names, and the original pre-Epilogue credits were replaced with English-only credits (with art-book character sketches added) after the Epilogue.

A few quick cameo references to other animations appear on occasion, often as allusions to the animators’ own works — especially in “Starlight Angel”, where the boyfriend could double for Gundam‘s Char Aznable and few of the other fair attendees are Akira lookalikes — but also works from around the world, such as the flying robots (also in “Starlight Angel”) including a fast appearance of Yula and Jad from the René Laloux and MÅ“bius’s 1982 French animé Les Maîtres du temps (The Time Masters).  Crowd shots become a classic “spot the cameo” game.