Cartoons – Never Was Magazine

Kōtetsujō no Kabaneri, or Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, is a beautifully done anime, set in a post-apocalyptic Japan.

At the time of industrialization, a mysterious plague broke out, turning corpses into kabane, a kind of blood-drinking zombie that is extremely hard to kill. Get bitten and you turn into one. Die and you turn into a kabane. Or, if you’re lucky, a kabaneri, a halfbreed of man and kabane. Survivors live in stations along the route of heavily armored trains, known as iron fortresses.

It is in these stations and on these trains that we find the characters of this story.

Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub!

Atompunk

Hilde HeyvaertMay 31, 2018April 1, 2019

If you are familiar with Rick and Morty, you already know the catchphrase of the titular character, Rick Sanchez.

Adult Swim, well known for cartoons with a twist, is currently reigning supreme with this mad science/atompunk cartoon.

Big Hero 6

Atompunk

Hilde HeyvaertFebruary 18, 2015April 1, 2019

Big Hero 6 may seem like the umptieth Disney movie, especially the umptieth digitally animated one. Considering it’s by the team of Frozen, people may expect something along those lines. Nothing could be further from the truth. Big Hero 6 is one of the best things released by Disney since well, quite a while.

This Marvel/Disney collaboration is proof that both companies should work together more often. The film is not only a magnificent feat when it comes to animation, but also has the same kind of imaginative storytelling and feel of adventure that Marvel movies have become famous for in the last decade.

Avatar: The Legend of Korra

Dieselpunk

Hilde HeyvaertFebruary 4, 2013April 1, 2019

The Legend of Korra is the sequel to the original Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon from Nickelodeon. It’s set seventy years into the future from the original series and is a whole new show in its own right. Although it’s not necessarily to see Avatar first, I would still very much recommend it or you will miss out on a great many details and history of this story.

In the first season we meet some familiar characters, a whole brand new bunch and a brand-new setting.

The Triplets of Belleville

Dieselpunk

Sigurjón NjálssonJuly 1, 2011April 8, 2019

The Triplets of Belleville bills itself as being something different from anything you’ve seen before. This may not be 100 percent true, as it certainly takes its cues from some of the original animations dating back to the first filmic era and there have been other animators to play extensively with the medium. However, it is a film you don’t see every day with a rather unusual style. The film has a certain dark, dingy quality that’s hard to put your finger on.

Visually, there are a lot of muted colors, with browns and beiges predominating, similar to old sepia photographs. Likewise, character designs are somewhat grotesquely shaped, and some of the scene are just a little bizarre.

Rintaro’s Metropolis

Dieselpunk

Sigurjón NjálssonJuly 1, 2009April 1, 2019

It is difficult to describe the exact relationship between the 2001 anime Metropolis, directed by Rintaro, and Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film of the same name without longwinded explanations or vague terms like “inspired by” or “loosely based upon.”

As a matter of fact, the anime is chiefly a filmic adaptation of a 1949 manga by Osamu Tezuka, best known as the creator of Astro Boy, which is purported to be “loosely inspired” by a few promotional images of the famous masterpiece of silent cinema.

The Adventures of Tintin

Dieselpunk

JamesJanuary 1, 2009April 1, 2019

It must have been a nostalgic mood that gripped me when I decided to buy the boxset of The Adventures of Tintin. I was yearning back to rainy Saturday afternoons when the TV or a good book offered the only chance for some innocent high adventure. So I acted on this whim and made the purchase, remembering the brightly colored characters and escapist adventures of Tintin.

Although not strictly what we might call dieselpunk, being based quite directly on period comic strips, these Tintin films could still be considered as good examples of the pulp genre and so are worthy of our study.