Charmingly benign.
The trajectory of this film seems to follow:
Akira --> Princess Mononoke --> Captain Planet
Aside from a scene of sexual violence (not extreme/out of place relative to anime, but still blatantly obvious), this very much feels like a kidified Akira. The character designs were from Otomo (Akira creator), so the similar look is unsurprising and an interesting precursor.
If you compare this with Akira though, I think it becomes clear where Rintaro fumbles and Otomo excels. Rintaro just can't handle the conceptual insanity of anime, especially when compared to the epitome of that attribute. You have to juggle the formula with how you're going to overwhelm the audience with nonsense against how you're going to texture the characters.
One note: There is a moment of confronted racism in the film that was surprisingly straight-forward. It's not unimportant to the story either.
Charmingly benign.
The trajectory of this film seems to follow:
Akira --> Princess Mononoke --> Captain Planet
Aside from a scene of sexual violence (not extreme/out of place relative to anime, but still blatantly obvious), this very much feels like a kidified Akira. The character designs were from Otomo (Akira creator), so the similar look is unsurprising and an interesting precursor.
If you compare this with Akira though, I think it becomes clear where Rintaro fumbles and Otomo excels. Rintaro just can't handle the conceptual insanity of anime, especially when compared to the epitome of that attribute. You have to juggle the formula with how you're going to overwhelm the audience with nonsense against how you're going to texture the characters.
One note: There is a moment of confronted racism in the film that was surprisingly straight-forward. It's not unimportant to the story either.
