Tekkon Kinkreet — Synopsis
Black and White in their home; a broken car in a backstreet in Treasure Town.
I watched this animated film today, and all I can say is that it was astounding, in every way. The attention to the details is extraordinary; each frame is full of wonderful detail, it can be used as a standalone piece of art. The animation is slick, the music is great, and the colors really stand out.
After watching Gotham Knight, a Batman animated film, I had to track other works by a Japanese studio called Studio 4°C. It was responsible for 2 short sequences in the film that I liked very much, the style of the art particularly.
Tekkon Kinkreet (鉄コン筋クリート, Tekkon Kinkurīto) translates from Japanese to ‘reinforced concrete’, referring to the tough metropolis the story takes place in, and also to the strong bonds between two unrelated orphans, Black and White, who live in the streets. The film depicts how tough the children’s lives are, with all the violence they commit, and unintentionally get into. They are depicted as being mentally retarded (with White not even able to wear his clothes on his own, despite being eleven), but spiritually gifted. Their lives take a sharp turn when gang members try to turn their town, Treasure Town, into an amusement park. Black, being unofficially the leaders of the ‘cats’, a gang formed of street kids, tries to stop that invasion, but his plans get deranged when he and White are separated.
White is taken by the police for protection, but he never stops bringing what’s on his mind onto paper.
The film arguably tries to describe the life in a crowded metropolis, depicting consumerism, materialism, and social inequality — in an abstract way. All of this is incarnated in the lives of the two orphans. The strong bonds shown between them also tries to convey that friendship exists even among the uneducated or the mentally retarded.
The film is definitely worth viewing in my opinion.
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