Metropolis

Metropolis (2001) is a Japanese animated sci-fi film you can watch online on iFILM. Director Rintaro adapted Osamu Tezuka's manga, itself inspired by Fritz Lang's silent landmark from 1927, with a screenplay by Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo.

The city of Metropolis is split between human elites above and robot labor below. Detective Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi arrive to track down a fugitive scientist. The scientist has just completed Tima — an android built to resemble a dead girl and intended as a weapon of absolute control for the ruling Duke Red. When everything collapses in fire and chaos, Kenichi and Tima find each other and run, neither of them knowing what she truly is.

Studio Madhouse rendered the retro-futurist city in extraordinary detail — 1920s art deco stacked on top of dystopian machine halls, enormous crowd sequences, jazz against industrial noise. The story earns its philosophical weight because it never stops being a proper chase. Stream Metropolis (2001) online on iFILM.