FILM REVIEW: Tekkonkinkreet (2006)

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Tekkonkinkreet is an anime film adapted from the manga series of the same name by Taiyo Matsumoto. The title mimics a child's mispronunciation of the words "Tekkin Konkurito" which mean "Steel-reinforced Concrete".

The plot takes place in the fictional town of Takaramachi (translates to Treasure Town) – a town presumably full of buildings made of steel-reinforced concrete. It involves two orphaned street children characters - the tough and determined Kuro (voiced by Kazunari Ninomiya) and the younger and much more childish and innocent Shiro (voiced by Yu Aoi).

The two children seem to adopt a very extreme version of Parkour/Free-running to make their way around the city, jumping from building to building. This has earned them to be labelled "Cats" by the other children in the city.

The two children believe that they own this town and will fiercely fight anyone that thinks otherwise, they often fight with other groups of children and have even formed alliances with adult mobsters.

When a rival gang of Yakuzas attempt to take over the city, Kuro and Shiro vow to defeat them. However, the true darkness and latent violence of the town will begin to show, and the two children will experience hard journeys as they aim to protect each other and their territory.

GOOD POINTS

• The huge amount of detail in the animation is truly unbelievable. The town of Takaramachi is incredibly cramped and over-populated, but you can still see every single window, every single door and every single imperfection on each building. I also loved a lot of the architecture featured in the film, like the giant clock tower adorned with brightly coloured elephants and patterns. It would be great to have a real-life version of that!
• When the two children were perched on things like telephone poles, the image of the town below was almost stretched out to create the illusion of great height, this was a little disorientating at first, but soon became a really interesting feature.
• If one looks at the film simply for what it is, the story seems fairly inconsequential. However, if you delve into the deeper messages that it may be communicating, you can find a great amount inside.
• The brotherly relationship between Kuro and Shiro is one of the most important parts of this movie. It really is lovely and so well put across that you can really empathise with the characters' feelings. I liked how you are first led to believe that Shiro is always in need of Kuro’s protection, but it is then revealed that it is Kuro that needs Shiro’s help more.

•  I love the fact that Kazunari Ninomiya was the voice of Kuro! I actually recognised his voice as I watched and I feel he did a really good job. He is one of my favourite actors because he shows emotions so vividly (especially sadness and anger).
• Shiro's cute collection of hats...they were so sweet!

BAD POINTS

• Without giving anything away, I finished the film thinking that there were some big holes in the narrative and I had a lot of unanswered questions floating around in my head. You did not see how things ended for some characters that featured quite heavily in the film and I found this very annoying. Perhaps you were not shown what happened to some because it simply was not important for the overall message, but I felt it was a little bit lazy to not include it.
• Despite the fact that I loved certain parts of the animation, the way humans were drawn is not an illustration style that I am a fan of. It is basically the antithesis of all the anime styles that I have previously liked. The eyes are small and beady; the limbs are long and gangly. It actually freaks me out slightly for some reason. This is not to say that the animation was at all bad, I am just not a lover of this particular illustration style myself.

OVERALL

 [Spoiler Alert!] – Here, I go into the deeper messages I personally took from the film. Skip this next section if you don’t want anything spoilt for you!

There were constantly clear parallels drawn between the notions of good and evil in the film. The character’s names Kuro (meaning Black) and Shiro (meaning White) were the most obvious of all. I do not think it was saying that Kuro was evil, but rather that he had a lot of darkness lurking deep inside him that Shiro did not. I think this was partly because Kuro was the eldest of the two, so he protected Shiro from all the bad things took them all on alone.

I also noticed a lot a Buddhist sentiment expressed in the narrative. The town of Takaramachi is grimy, frightening and full of crime, and Shiro frequently mentions that he and Kuro will move away and live by the sea one day. This is also a desire expressed later on by one of the Yakuzas.

 I think this notion of an ideal life by the sea is a metaphor for getting back to nature. Shiro is young and innocent, but he cares deeply for plants and the natural world – often drawing them in his pictures. He also has a sixth sense of sorts and a powerful urge to be good to others; this has led him to feel a strong sense of humanity. Kuro is not so sensitive and feels more of an attachment to Takaramachi, though his strong connection to Shiro is always prevalent and ends up being the thing that saves him.

With regards to the the childrens' seemingly supernatural ability to jump on buildings, I think this may have been to show that we are all innocent when we are young, so the children can jump above it and be free. However, we can lose innocence as we grow and can become more corrupt and weighed down by our greed.

In short, I believe one of the things the film is saying is that humans have become corrupted by power, wealth and technology. If we were to live a more natural life – working with Mother Earth instead of against her – we would not be prone to such greed and violence.

Okay, you can continue here – no spoilers!

Overall, this film is a lot more complicated than any of the synopses let on. There are a lot of deeper things that you can take from it. However, I feel that some parts of the narrative were sacrificed in favour of this, which meant that I was left feeling confused about what happened on surface of the film.
What I mean by this is that some things were left unanswered completely, maybe because they were just tools to illustrate a deeper point. I was a little irritated by this at first, but if you can look at this film as more of an artistic offering than as an entertaining, simple story, you probably won’t feel as lost by it as I did initially.

I think it is a great film for any anime fan, but perhaps not for those who are not that familiar with anime in general or people who are not very open-minded viewers.

It is one of those films that demands a little bit of patience from the audience as it allows a lot of subjectivity in what it presents. You may find yourself, like me, not drawing proper conclusions until you think it over again after watching it.

I would recommend this to anime fans, or people that enjoy films with deeper messages about the human psyche.
It is an unusual movie, but one that definitely gets you thinking on many levels!

[Image Source: Google Images].