Andrei Pavlov While reading quite a few negative lines about the silliness and shallowness of "Najica", picked up this one – "Suchimoboi" - to be carried away by a serious adventure bigger than life. And now sitting here and writing this review. To me it's the worst anime (from my experience of approx. 30+ serials and anime features), which carried me away with its awkwardness. It starts kind of well but even before reaching its middle line it becomes unbearable. It's been a torture to watch it till the end, but there was a hope in me that somehow it would rehabilitate itself (so much fuss about its detail and artistic development). No. "Najica" entertains and has a bunch of groovy characters, while delivering an amazing gun-play non-stop animation. The "Steamboy" is blank in character and design. Just look at those sirs in high tops and pseudo 19th century outfit – they look so unimpressive in this Japanese animation. It's one of those rare cases when my only thought was "When will this cartoonery-mockoonery" end?" Yes, the views of London were great, but it doesn't worth a bit to go through this 2-hour torture to witness them.Bad character development, monotonous happenings, unimpressive design (except, maybe the wheel-like vehicle of the main character, which was good), the running time which makes you feel like it's never going to reach its finish. Besides, it's got this cheap didactic tone, as if the whole story were something of "Barefoot Gen" calibre. Watch "Last Exile" instead, which is also in steampunk category (correct?), but has something to offer indeed. Unlike this Suchimuboi-balloon.A 2 out of 10 is a good mark for this irritating anime balloon. Thanks for attention.

Irishchatter I wouldn't call this the best movie I've ever seen but it was enjoyable and interesting at the same time. The graphics and the drawings of the background were beautiful. It looked as if it was very real! I would say Bravo to the animators or drawers who were involved doing the movie!Anna Paquin did a mighty job playing as James Ray Steam aka Steamboy. You wouldn't think it was actually a young girl voicing the character. It's not that I'm sexist but I'm just surprised that she did a good job acting as a young boy. I suppose Steamboy looked so teen-aged so I suppose they decided to pick any girl in playing the character in order to no hear a rather deep voice. I suppose it would be a good idea too if they tried that out in the first place but there ya go! I would say this movie is good,it's just not a favorite of mine!

Blueghost I like this film, but do have one gripe with it; the English voice cast. But, before I get into that, let me address what I do like about the movie."Steamboy" is an inventive take on the steam-punk genre popularized in paper and pencil role playing games, where the Victorian era (typically England) sparks not just an industrial revolution, but a technological revolution where steam driven things are all around. Steam powered cars, steam powered airships, steam powered sea going vessels of all sorts, steam powered robots, steam powered weapons, and assortment of other inventions, all existing alongside a more traditional horse drawn society with buggies, whips, men and women dressing and behaving with that Victorian reserve.Europe is heavily divided by deep cultural and political rifts. Everyone who is mobile gets along well enough, and the working class folks seem to be okay with visitors from afar, but the upper-mid tier autocrats are always in search of more resources. One man believes that an innovation in harnessing steam can revolutionize the world in more ways than one, and embarks on a quest to make destructive devices available to all who are willing to pay, all the while gaining more rewards from his endeavors. His father sums up his character quite nicely at the end of the second act.James Ray Steam is the son of this one man who has dreams and ambitions that could bring mankind to ruin. And he follows a strange cloak and dagger like quest to help protect an innovation created by his grandfather. In the meantime he finds himself befriended by a an upper class girl with perhaps brutal flaws in her character, but who comes around at the end when all hell breaks loose.If I had one real critique about this film, it's that the English voice cast was not up to snuff. Technically it's a better dubbing effort than a lot of anime imported from Japan, but the actual cast was, in essence, miscast. Casting Anna Paquin to voice the young male lead almost works, but I think the team that imported the film from overseas would have better served this movie had they just gone ahead and found some twelve or fourteen year old boy to voice the part, because the adult feminine quality of Anna's voice does leak through here and there.Patrick Stewart is a solid performer, though his voice feels a little stilted, which I'm sure is due to the dubbing constraints of fitting English dialog into a character designed to mouth Japanese sentences. Likewise Scarlett Ohara's rendition of the little girl seems to suffer some of the same constraints--that, and she doesn't sound like a snobbish girl from upper class British gentry; i.e. she needed an accent.The scope of the story is typical Japanese in spite of it being set in Great Britain, where colossal machines and armies of soldiers clash with titanic results. I always feel a bit exhausted after seeing one of these Japanese epic productions that have lots of action and lots of large scale destruction. But I guess that's a good thing, because the Japanese know how to bring you back from all of that emotional height, and deliver good stories.So it is with Steamboy. It's not a children's film as such, though I think preteen boys (maybe some girls) up through the 20-something dem will enjoy it. Me, as a middle aged man, liked the production, but then again I'm that much of an anime fan to like a lot of Japanese offerings.It's huge in scope, has quite a bit of action, it is a bit dark here and there thematically as well as visually, and could stand to be recast for another English rendition, but otherwise this is a solid performer. Check it out by yourself, of if you have some older kids who don't mind seeing the odd cartoon every now then, watch it with them.Enjoy.

CapnDred I haven't marked this as a spoiler, but I do mention a couple of things that occur in the film. I don't think they'll spoil it though...I wanted to like this film SO much. I love the Steampunk genre and knowing how good the animation on Akira was I thought this would be a lush Steampunk adventure akin to Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.However, where that film had heart, this one had cogs and steam. Yes, it was beautifully animate and had some lovely ideas in it. The central concept of a power source that never was, and yet is so powerful it corrupts all manner of men and turns family upon itself is fascinating. It's something that I would expect to see in a futuristic sci-fi with some kind of newly discovered power. Setting it in a steam age where the power source is a new way of harnessing steam is, for me, the single best thing about this film. It's a nice twist. My main problem with it is bland characters with nothing to make you feel the ties between them. The film tries to get us to sympathise with James' plight when he makes revelations about both his father and grandfather, without EVER having shown us any kind of previous relationship between himself and them. We are asked to assume that there is an emotional tie between a boy and a father and grandfather who have been absent for an undivulged amount of time. The film asks us to feel betrayal from both the father and the grandfather towards the other, without ever having shown us that they ever did anything but hate each other. It is hard to empathise with this betrayal from two people who we have only seen mistrust each other from the outset. The film asks us to feel James' angst when Scarlett is in peril, without ever having shown us he has any kind of emotional tie to her (and quite rightly so in my opinion for she is rude, abrasive and irritating throughout the whole movie. Why the film then expects us to want James to save her is beyond me!)This film is actually quite cold and mean-spirited. Rarely do we see any character in it act out of anything other than their own interests. Rarely does anyone help anyone else. The characters are selfish and single-minded. I'm normally not so cynical, but maybe this is truer to life than most films. Maybe in such extraordinary circumstances, people would be so selfish. But as a piece of cinematic entertainment, it leaves me cold.What I DID enjoy was that the film didn't clearly outline who was "good" and who was "evil". There was a point, round about where James first meets his grandfather in the castle and stops trying to hinder him, that I almost kicked myself. It was about there that I had a revelation that the film wasn't going to tell me who to root for and I was disappointed in myself for being annoyed with the film up to that point for not making it clear who were the "goodies". Such is how used to being force fed emotion and morals by films. At that point, I was pleased that the film left it up to both James, and the viewer to decide who was "right". Yes, James makes his choice, and as the viewer we are then more likely to side with him, but at the point I described in the film it was very much up in the air and I liked that.Unfortunately I watched the dubbed version. Though, being set in England with English characters, maybe, for one, this was more authentic. I bought my DVD, put it in the player, went to find the language options only to discover it was an English only DVD. Yes - some of the accents were ropey to say the least, but not to the point of distraction. I'm a Midlander but I know what a broad Mancunian accent sounds like. With Patrick Stewart being from Huddersfield, not far from Manchester, I though he might've gotten the accent closest, but he seemed a little too generic northern pushing towards Lancaster. Though that is a minor quibble. And hey - maybe the granddad moved to Manchester from Yorkshire?Lastly - my final major quibble with the film is that by the end of it, I was left with a "so what?" feeling. Has this experience changed James in any way? Or the balance of international power? From the closing credits, I think James went on to develop a super steam train and maybe become a superhero who fought in something like WWI, brought forward maybe due to the steamball? I don't know. The film didn't focus at all on how this monumental experience of being kidnapped and, whilst aboard a pioneering and potentially world-altering piece of technology being actively and aerially embroiled in an explosive international battle for power on which two of his close family members are very active on opposite sides has affected young Master Steam and as such, I find the film again rings hollow.I don't just come on IMDb just to knock films. I come on to comment when something about a film is notable enough to me to comment on, good or bad. And the hype surrounding this film coupled with a certain amount of disappointment was one thing. Also, it is rare that whilst watching a film, I notice a lack of emotional connection at the time of watching. If that lack is there, it's normally afterwards that I notice so I thought this was notable.Technically, a very proficient film. Emotionally, lacking.Where this film's heart should have been, there's just cogs and steam.