Robot Carnival

1987. Movie. 91 min. Science fiction. dir Hiroyuki Kitazume, Takashi Nakamura, Hidetoshi Omori, Katsuhiro Otomo, Yasuomi Umetsu, others. mus Isaku Fujita, Joe Hisaishi, Yasunori Honda. -jd

An anthology of short stories linked only by a single keyword—robot—Robot Carnival is an animated showcase of some of the most promising up-and-coming animators of the 1980s.

While drawing water from a well in the middle of a desert, a child picks up a blowing piece of paper. Horrified at what he sees, the boy runs home and tries to explain to the villagers, with increasingly panicked motions, what the flier says. We soon see why: a huge rolling juggernaut of a machine in the shape of the words “Robot Carnival” appears over the horizon, dispensing both wonder and destruction in the form of fanciful robots that dance, twirl, and perform music, and then explode in a pyrotechnic display. After this ironic introduction, the individual stories begin.

“Starlight Angel”: In a Disneyland-like amusement park, a young girl finds new love on a fantasy adventure ride with a park employee dressed as a robot, after experiencing the heartbreak of finding out that the man who’d given her a star-shaped necklace she wears was dating her best friend.

“Cloud”: Artful pen-and-ink sketches in the style of moving comic panels. As a small robot character marches in the foreground, clouds form and reform behind him into different shapes: rockets, rabbits, fireworks, feathers, nuclear explosions, a silvery moon.

“Deprive”: A futuristic city is the site of an attack from outer space, and a young girl is kidnapped by the invaders. Her faithful robot companion gets an upgrade to a human disguise in order to fight back against her captors and rescue her.

“Franken’s Gears”: An update of the Frankenstein creation story. A newly vivified robot tries to mimic his creator’s actions, resulting in a darkly comic moment.

“Presence”: A young man builds a lifelike female android as a hobby to distract him from an unfulfilling life, but is disturbed when she begins to ask him questions about her existence that he can’t answer.

“A Tale of Two Robots”: In 19th-century Japan, a duel between two clockwork monstrosities makes a battlefield out of a Japanese harbor town.

“Nightmare”: A robot and a human travel through a horrific landscape of marching robots and destruction in modern Tokyo.

The stories are unconnected, and each segment has its own individual animation style, ranging from apocalyptic to comedic. The framing sequence, by Katsuhiro Otomo, portrays the movie’s title (and by association, the entire movie) as a robot itself, relentless in its mission to entertain. It’s very dark humor, similar to the “Cannon Fodder” portion of Memories that Otomo also directed, with the pomp and circumstance of the approaching carnival portrayed as a horrible destructive force, steamrolling over everything in its path. Robotic ballerinas descend with the shrill, screaming sound of falling missiles, and then explode. A clockwork conductor waves a baton over the destruction, seeming to orchestrate the violence. A robotic brass band shoots live explosives from its instruments. The machine then rolls off into the distance, leaving the now homeless villagers to gape at the blasted landscape left behind. No doubt it was hoped that viewers of the film to come would have a similar reaction to what they would soon see, although not all of the segments live up to that goal.

There’s a fairly limited range of robots presented in Robot Carnival; most are typical anime-style creations, from bubble-shaped pods and harmless-looking androids to clumsy clockworks and nightmarish, claw-fingered giants. Plenty of complicated machinery is on display, from tanks to battle suits and general sci-fi gadgetry, but only two segments—“A Tale of Two Robots” and “Presence”—offer fully rounded and distinctive worlds. “Presence” is set in a futuristic England, where cobblestone streets and medieval walls coexist with computers and hovercars, and realistic robots walk the streets undetected. In one startling scene, a group of schoolboys snatch the head right off a passing professorial-looking character—a robot, of course, but we only realize this after the fact—and begin to boot the head around like a soccer ball. A female android is the most impressive design, her fluffy and ultra-feminine clothes adorned with dangling stars.

“A Tale of Two Robots” is set in 19th-century Japan. The color scheme is reminiscent of traditional Japanese woodcuts, and two robots facing each other across a river represent Japan and Europe, respectively. The attacking European robot looks like a walking barrel or windmill, while the Japanese robot resembles the ceremonial shrines typically carried through the streets in festivals, a comic shorthand for a literal clash of cultures.

Since most of the segments are dialogue-free, music is particularly important to each story. With the exception of contemplative piano scores for “Cloud” and “Presence,” the bulk of the music is electronic, of the style prevalent in video games of the era. “A Tale of Two Robots” is backed by the kabuki yells and drumrolls of traditional Japanese music.

Robot Carnival is a showcase of the state of the anime art form, circa 1987. Most of the segments are meant to dazzle the eye more than engage the brain. “Starlight Angel” is little more than the story of a memorable first date, set in what appears to be Tokyo Disneyland. Neon-outlined robots march in a slightly altered version of the classic Electric Parade, and when the main female character and her new robotic friend take flight over the theme park on a sci-fi ride, the animation is similar to the flight over London in Peter Pan, with a futuristic Wendy and Peter. “Deprive” is a straightforward action tale. “Cloud,” although the most obviously artistic segment, is also the weakest exploration of the robot theme, with only a small mechanical character walking in the foreground of a changing panorama to tie it to the concept at all. “Nightmare” simply plays like an overt homage to the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, only with robots instead of demons creating its hellscape. “Franken’s Gears” is a similar homage, this time to Frankenstein, with a robot arising “to life” in a cluttered laboratory filled with sparking machinery. Especially for hand-painted cel animation, these segments are amazing for the sheer number of moving parts on display, and for the beauty of the color designs.

Of the two chapters that contain dialogue, “A Tale of Two Robots” is a simple comedy, but “Presence,” the longest and most haunting piece, deserves special note. “For what purpose do I exist?” asks the female android of “Presence.” Created in secret by a scientist whose name we never learn, the android girl is the only living thing in a dark basement workshop full of clockwork toys—more alive, it’s implied, than her creator. The story follows the scientist through the years after he destroys his own creation, haunted by her memory in a sunlit yet nightmarish dream sequence. In the android’s final appearance, when the scientist is a very old man, she appears as a sort of angel, leading her creator away by the hand. It’s a contemplative, sad, and visually beautiful piece of animation, and the highlight of the anthology.

Robot Carnival ends as it began, with bleak humor. A decorative little toy that charms small children also destroys their house, just to deliver a simple message: “The End.”

Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Steamboy) directed the opening and ending sequences. Yasuomi Umetsu (“Presence”) made his mark as animation director for Megazone 23 (Parts II & III). Hiroyuki Kitazume (“Starlight Angel”) created and directed Moldiver. Koji Morimoto (“Franken’s Gears”) directed the “Magnetic Rose” segment of Memories, and the “Beyond” segment of The Animatrix.

Hiroyuki Kitakubo (“A Tale of Two Robots”) later directed Roujin Z and Blood: The Last Vampire. Takashi Nakamura (“Nightmare”) went on to write and direct A Tree of Palme. Hidetoshi Omori (“Deprive”) is a popular mecha illustrator who served as animation director on Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack.

The confrontation between the android girl and her creator in “Presence” takes place in a dark, claustrophobic basement. The scene is shown mostly in small details—the android girl’s shoes, a close-up of her lips, small objects on the workbench—as if to suggest the scientist’s reluctance to accept all of his creation. The android’s destruction takes place off screen, and is suggested symbolically by a tiny, toppled windup toy, a changing light pattern from the window, and silent spurts of black oil.

The ending of “The Tale of Two Robots” shows a cartoonish red-and-white sun on the horizon, straight off an old Japanese flag. “Look! It’s the rising sun of Japan!” one character trumpets, only to be corrected by a second character who observes, “the sun is setting, dimwit . . . oh, unless you mean symbolically.”

Currently a hard-to-find collectible on VHS tape in the States, Robot Carnival was one of Streamline Pictures’ early flagship titles, shown at film festivals around the world. It premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel as part of the channel’s “Adventures in Japanese Animation” event block in 1993.

advisory Some violence and upsetting imagery, but nothing that older kids couldn’t handle.