Sometimes, you watch or read something that seems to be the apotheosis of a movement or genre. In my case, that movement is steampunk and that something is Steamboy, the 2004 animated film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo (of Akira fame). Take any screenshot of this film and it oozes steampunk. It feels, in its own strange way, almost pure steampunk, if there is such a thing.
Despite being a Japanese production, the film is set in Britain, the country that, more than any other, is the lynchpin of the steampunk genre. The smoke-filled skylines and dirty cities come straight out of a Dickens novel.
Steampunk exists to reimagine the Industrial Revolution, and that is what Otomo does. Specifically, the plot takes place in Manchester, that great city of textile work that was one dubbed “Cottonopolis”, and one of the birthplaces of modern industrial society. It is only fitting that such a quintessential steampunk story should take place in such a quintessential location.
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