"Alle reden über das digitale Zeitalter, aber wer die uralte Faszination der Maschine erleben möchte, ist bei STEAMBOY genau richtig. 16 Jahre nach AKIRA hat sich Katsuhiro Otomo wieder zu einem epochemachenden Anime aufgerafft, das den Geist der Industriellen Revolution in großartigen Bildern einfängt. Der kleine Erfinder Ray gerät durch seinen Großvater in den Besitz eines "Steamballs", einer unglaublichen Energiequelle, die für viele, auch Rays Vater, zum Objekt der Begierde wird. Neben der tollkühnen Action mit Verfolgungsjagden in Lokomotiven und Zeppelinen stellt Otomo fast beiläufig so wichtige Fragen wie: "Was darf die Wissenschaft?" oder "Wem nutzt der Fortschritt?" Auf welcher Seite wird wohl unser kleines Genie des Dampfes am Ende stehen?

“IN 80 TAGEN UM DIE WELT auf SPEED" lautet ein Kommentar zu diesem überragenden Anime, und das trifft es ziemlich genau. Dieses Meisterwerk ist ein Muss - komm und siehe und lass dich zwei Stunden lang in Otomos cineastischen Kosmos entführen!”

mangaportal.de

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“Close your eyes. Picture, if you can, the bustling complexity of Victorian England as seen through the eyes of Katsuhiro Otomo (AKIRA), one of Japan’s most inventive Japanese animation directors, and you have STEAMBOY. A decade in the making, the film’s overwhelming achievement is the mind-blowing, intricate detail of its fictionalized, sci-fi vision of the nineteenth century. Otomo’s vision of a possible dawn of industrialization, coupled with a roller-coaster narrative, makes STEAMBOY a cinematic milestone.

Young Mancunian Ray Steam comes from a long line of inventors: his late father and his grandfather created an inexhaustible power source that can be harnessed within a small sphere. The film revolves around the fight over this machine that is capable of providing an infinite supply of energy - the steamball. Soon Ray finds himself at the centre of a war between the United Kingdom and the United States over the use of this tool as a devastating weapon. With the help of his grandfather and a bratty debutante-in-training named Scarlett, "Steamboy" has to save London from Dickensian cyborgs, proto-war planes and, most importantly, Steam Tower, an enormous monument to progress-at-all costs that has the power to destroy the world.

STEAMBOY is dark, brooding and absolutely thrilling: unfolding at London’s Great Exhibition, the film’s pulse-pounding climactic battle of big, loud, metal machines lasts a full hour. Just when we think Otomo has exhausted his teeming, virile imagination, another gobsmacking plot twist or wild character makes our jaws drop even further.

In addition to its many staggering thrills, STEAMBOY offers a complex, moving political allegory of the historical trajectory leading from the steam age to the nuclear bomb - and Otomo asks many questions about the value of scientific progress and profit when it endangers life. STEAMBOY is one of the most sophisticated and elaborate Japanese animated films ever made, an unbelievably imaginative and immensely exciting adventure that should not be missed.”

Toronto Film Festival