Neo Tokyo is a 1987 sci fi anthology of 3 short animated films. The middle film called Running Man appeared on the 205th episode of MTV's Liquid Television.
Neo Tokyo is adapted from a 1986 collection of short stories of the same name by Taku Mayumura with each of the 50 minute trilogy’s 3 diverse films being scripted by directors Rin Taro Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Katsuhiro Otomo.
Neo Tokyo begins within a maze called The Labyrinth in which a clown leads a little girl to a circus tent where he then shows her the 2nd and 3rd films, Running Man and The Order To Stop Construction. The 2nd film, Running Man, is directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri and set at a futuristic racetrack called La Circus where drivers compete in anti gravity cars and where champion Zack Hugh--nicknamed The God of Death--literally drives himself to death to stay ahead of much younger drivers. The 3rd feature, The Order To Stop Construction, is directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and set in the Amazon Jungle where a project manager is sent to shut down a construction site but finds himself at odds with the site’s robot foreman that wants the project to go on as scheduled.
Neo Tokyo was a direct-to-video release in 1987 and double-billed with a feature length anime called Silent Mobius. At that time, Neo Tokyo was licensed by a company called Streamline Pictures and if you knew about anime back then you know about the classic “State-of-the-art Japanese animation” trailer on all of their videos. When Streamline went out of business, Neo Tokyo and all of the company's anime titles were on moratorium for a while before being picked up by a company called ADV that also went out of business putting Neo Tokyo again on moratorium.
There is no plot unifying the short films; Neo Tokyo was anime’s way of showcasing its top talents at that time, Rin Taro, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Katsuhiro Otomo who all went on to elevate anime out of obscurity and college dorms to the mainstream with classics like Akira, Metropolis (anime), Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Each director of this anthology has his own distinct style. You have Rin Taro's surrealistic look against Kawajiri's realistic look; and then there is Otomo's obsession with tech and mechanical details. Of the 3 shorts, Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Running Man is my favorite. The detail in the cars and the characters-- especially the close-ups of the veins pulsating in Zack Hugh’s face and hands-- are incredible. Of the 3 directors, Kawajiri is the best character designer and all of Kawajiri’s films--from Ninja Scroll to Wicked City--bear this trademark. Neo Tokyo reminds us that as much as animation has gained with computer graphics and 3D, it can never replicate the edgy comic book feel that it once did when anime was hand-drawn and painted, cell by cell, by artists. No, the anime wasn’t smooth by today’s animation standards but it had more flair to make up for it.
Anyway, anyone interested in seeing what real anime is--when it was really good--need to check out Neo Tokyo. It’s not for sale anymore but you can probably check it out on Youtube somewhere. I was lucky enough to get a copy after it was reissued.
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