Steam Panzer Squad Toaster Division

Steamboy (2005)

Rating ... B+ (79)

What Steamboy lacks in sentimentality it makes up with ideology; Ôtomo turns back the clock from Akira's post-apocalyptic psionics to Victorian steam technology in his anxiously awaited follow-up endeavor, though his intent remains the same. An essay on the risks and responsibilities of human progress, Steamboy concerns three generations of the Steam family who don't see eye-to-eye on the most productive use for their "steam ball" invention.

The plot is essentially a technological tug-of-war kicked off when Ray Steam, the youngest of the bunch, finds the cutting edge steam ball delivered to his house, along with the plans and a note from his grandfather Lloyd - the ball's inventor - warning him to safeguard the technology from his father Eddie's clutches. While Steamboy flirts with scientific funding - capitalism, government subsidization - its philosophical rift entwines science and sociology. While the characteristically megalomaniacal, Japanese "villain" Eddie believes scientific achievements of great power to create an environment that fosters the human understanding required to use them wisely, Lloyd opts for the conservative opposite - that technological developments be deliberately hindered until society is ready for them. That these vantage points swap between the two characters since glimpsed in the opening scene conveys how easily perspective can shift with age and experience.

Dubious symbolism introduces another important character in Steamboy, Miss Scarlet O'Hara, daughter of corporate affluence of the O'Hara steamworks. Though the ham-fisted reference earmarks her vanity, given her status as cultural icon amidst the pragmatic and the working class it's all but a necessary evil. Midway through the movie Scarlet leaves the compound in search of Ray; amidst the public / private sector skirmish-cum-pissing-contest she becomes trapped in a ravaged warehouse and as shards of glass from the ceiling fall around her, each fragment depicts an earlier scene of relative tranquility between her and Ray, denoting the ease with which science and economies of scale can dwarf the problems of the individual. That Scarlet abandons spoiled sophistication (esp. note her Amelia Earhart get-up over the closing credits) is not a facile call-to-arms but an admission complacency has no place in a time of progress.

In Steamboy's climactic struggle, several opposing forces momentarily align to serve humanity and avert tragedy, and this unison is celebrated as a model society finally entitled to advancement. Uncertain, but ultimately optimistic, Steamboy is a tale of perilous scientific breakthrough and the extraordinary human progress that follows in its wake.

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