Neo Tokyo

An animated anthology in three parts. Rintaro's opening follows a small girl and her cat through a mirror and into the wake of a circus procession; there is no story, only design. Yoshiaki Kawajiri's segment concerns a future racing sport and a driver who steers with his mind and burns himself out doing it. Katsuhiro Otomo closes with political satire: at a robotic construction site abandoned because of a civil war, the machines keep building with nobody giving orders, and the official sent to stop them cannot. All three demonstrate the technical level of Japanese animation at the end of the eighties, and the hand-drawn detail still surprises. Who it is for: viewers who like anthology animation and eighties Japanese science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a connected story, since the only thing the parts share is tone.