The manga that this film was adapted from only came from when the author saw an advertisement for the 1929 film in a magazine. He had never seen the film, but instead wrote his own story loosely around the same concept. The result, however, is a far deeper film than the original. 

A robot girl, Tima, is created by a mad scientist (Dr. Laughton) to sort of replace the ruler of Metropolis’ dead daughter and sit at the throne of the ziggurat, a giant tower in the center of the largest city in the world. Once there she would rule as a god, though what this meant only the mad scientist really understood.  Enter Shunsaku, a detective trying to track down Dr. Laughton for crimes happens to take along his nephew, Kenichi as an assistant.

Things may have gone according to plan with little incident if it weren’t for Rock, the jealous adoptive son of Duke Red who desperately wants his father’s attention, but is unable to get it. Angered by his father’s focus on his robot replacement for his daughter, Rock focuses on a group called the Marduks which aim to destroy all robots in the city in a sociopathic fasion often firing blindly into crowds and not caring who gets hurt in his temper tantrums.

The end result is a film that is gripping and engaging, but almost too complex. While a much better story than the original that inspired it, it suffers from there being too many aspects of the story such that nothing really has enough time to develop an attachment to me as the viewer. It lacks depth.  The film would have greatly improved if it had focused in more on the core elements and allowed us to get to know a smaller set of the characters better.

Even with this, I feel that it is a great spiritual successor to the original. It tried to push the technological boundaries of its form with 3d-rendered backgrounds behind drawn characters. The visuals in this film are stunning at times, and immersive. While the story far surpasses the 1929 film, it leaves me feeling as if there wasn’t much there. I didn’t really get to know the characters as much as I’d like, and the story has many gaps in it that were left unexplained.

Still, this film was a fun ride, and I enjoyed watching it enough that I’ll probably watch it again in time which is more than I can say for the 1929 version.