SKY BLUE
 
VOICES OF: David Naughton, Joon-ho
Chung, Hye jin Yu
2005, 90 Minutes, Directed by: Moon-saeng Kim, Park Sunmin
 Moviegoers
unsure of South Korea’s foray into animation and Japanese-dominated anime should
stick around for the end credits of any episode of
The Simpsons
—
Korea has been a hotbed of animation for years.
Originally released in South
Korea in 2003 as Wonderful Days, Sky Blue is the international
release with English dialogue and some re-editing. It is a gorgeous-looking and
expensive film that combines CGI with traditional animation to create a vivid
panorama of a future gone wrong. Set in 2140, the world is poisoned with toxic
rain so the survivors are holed up in a giant bio-city called Ecoban. Claiming
lifeboat rights, the founders of the city set themselves up as the ruling elite
while the “Diggers” – the considerably larger refugee population – live in the
city below, digging and mining carbon to fuel the city which in turn creates
more pollution.
The Diggers, growing restless
at the callous treatment of their people, plan rebellion. And Ecoban expatriate,
Dr. Noah, has a radical plan that might just revitalize the skies. Soon, the
elite have their security force running Gestapo-like campaigns to stamp out any
threat to their way of life.
This class division theme
shouldn’t come as a surprise to sci-fi fans. We’ve seen this ever since Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis or Classic
Star Trek and the troglytes in The Cloud Minders. And the dire
warnings about ecological disaster are also common fare in apocalyptic themes
seen as recently as The Matrix. The key significance
of Sky Blue is that the movie is a vivid opening salvo that Korean anime
is easily the equal to the slick work coming out of Japan.
There are some great scenes in
Sky Blue
—
an aerial chase between mini-fighters and a glider, the giant city of Ecoban
itself, and a liquid sky that’s ever seething and turbulent. There’s also some
great imagination at work as the vehicles, machinery and technology of Sky
Blue are slick with clear influences of Giger (Alien)
and Syd Mead (Blade Runner).
But Sky Blue’s plotline
suffers from a soggy PG-rated soap opera plot. Security agent, Jay, discovers
that one of the Digger rebels is her childhood love, Shua. But Jay doesn’t
realize that her superior officer, Cade, is also in love with her. Adding this
trite love triangle occasionally slows down the movie, especially as the
storyline gets complicated with an assortment of secondary characters which are
almost mathematically created and subtracted so that the audience feels when a
character ends up getting killed.
Compared to the recent release
of the Japanese cult classic Ghost in the Shell 2,
Sky Blue steers away from overtly erotic or disturbing imagery. It’s not
as gory or as bloody. Though there are some sensual renderings of both Jay and
Shua, we’re not talking hentai here. Sky Blue is a straightforward
adventure that should keep anime-lovers fascinated with fresh new art. It’s also
a great sign of a new source of anime to come.
- Harrison Cheung
|
