Highlander: The Search for Vengeance

Kawajiri's preoccupation with combative, unkillable men meets an undying 80s fantasy franchise. Retail opportunity! The future is rubble, policed by Fourth Reich spider-bots and ruled by an ageless, Saturn worshipping, strat-shredding, Ziggurat dweller. Into this predicament wanders a trench coat wearing ronin who quickly hooks up with a pragmatic female soul, then establishes strained ties with the local freedom fighters. Forever war flashbacks detail a millennia long feud between the two lead immortals, of which this is but the latest stage.

Both have stuck to their roots: the Scottish stray seeks to keep himself ostracised, whilst the Roman imperialist throws in with whatever ideology is currently pushing an expansionist agenda. Highlander: The Search for Vengeance's hysterical highlight comes in the form of a near-miss memory reel - the token MacLeod pursues his quarry over endless continents and centuries, relentlessly coming up short. It's a believable insight into the psychotic urges of these eternal, grudge holders. They're all each other's got. As this is a Kawajiri flick, action is brisk and accomplished. It's a shame his Western paymasters took it upon themselves to hack out chunks of nuance though. There's tell that it was all restored for a vaporous Director's Cut edition available in Japan. If I ever track it down, I'll let you know.

One Million Horse-Power?

Latest dreary hawk for Imagi's upcoming Astro Boy. Look out for blink-brief cameos by a rather young looking Osamu Tezuka; and Grant Morrison's Tyrant Sun Solaris, from DC One Million and All-Star Superman, who looks to be pitching in on jobbing heavy duty. If Atom really must be awkwardly transplanted into a Western centric animation adventure, why couldn't Pixar have come sniffing for the rights? I know they're not usually hip to adaptation, but this is Osamu Tezuka for God's sake. At the very least John Lasseter could have conspired with a cackling Hayao Miyazaki to bring some maximum density to the fondest creation of the limited animation mindset originator. That'd be a victory for their way of life. In my head cinema I'm imagining Brad Bird directing a take on The Greatest Robot on Earth episode: a young person-bot struggling to understand the true implications of his power, whilst battling a serial-killer robot. David Fincher could shoot some live action Pluto inserts on gloomy weekends, and there you have it: something perfect.

T(etsujin) 28

Behold! TMNT CG animation studio Imagi has silver screen designs on the very first giant robot manga. Following on from Osamu Tezuka's mini-bot heroics, Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Tetsujin 28-go told the story of an inventor's son, and his pairing to a voiceless boiler-bot. Together they battled against all creed of criminal, and no small amount of rampaging armour slaves. Imagi, by way of pitch, prepared this short reel of bare exposition and robo-clash histrionics.

Tetsujin 28-go becomes reduction zip flavoured T28. That's one way around the name muddle I suppose. Christen the robot with a Soviet tank production number! You can't really blame the struggling animation studio; Tetsujin's a little hard to swallow for a deadly mainstream kids animation feature, and who wants to pay the Ladd's for the use of water-down title Gigantor? Especially when they're preparing their own spin-off franchise: G3. Not to mention that any attempt at a literal translation is going to undermine the effort with a distinct whiff of me-too Iron Man grasping. A dire situation all round! Still did they really have to transform Yokoyama's Shotaro Kaneda from a stocky little prep kid into a indistinct 'tude placeholder? Shouldn't think the feature will be exploring cataclysm weapon guilt following World War II either.

Still! The mountain-bot clashes ain't no slouch, and there's always disaster currency in seeing bold order-men piloting from their destruction avatar's palm. Fearless! Shotaro aside, colour me interested - certainly more so than the curve-less Astro Boy update.

Quite apart from a duff live action movie, this isn't the first time this franchise has been recently revived. Most notably, Giant Robo grandstander Yasuhiro Imagawa piloted a splendid TV series in 2004. Aside from a feature length capper movie, it's easily available in the West; Manga published at least two DVD volumes in the UK, and Geneon got the whole set out for the US. Well worth tracking down. This Tetsujin is less endless metal clashes, more Frankenstein rumination on artificial life responsibility.

Get all excited! Check this nationalistic pride flavoured opener!



That theme's a winner.