SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers

Original Title: 新SOS大東京探検隊
Romanized: Shin SOS Dai Toukyou Tankentai
Literal: New SOS Great Tokyo Exploration Party

Plot Synopsis

One sunny day three friends (and a tag-along little brother) meet for an expedition into the tunnels beneath Tokyo. Armed with the notebook from a father's youthful exploring, they set off in search of long-lost treasure. The tunnels turn out to be an unexpectedly lively place, and high adventure ensues.

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2008-06-25

SOS! Tokyo Explorers: The Next is a little one-off all-ages adventure movie about a troupe of kids looking for treasure and finding interesting people and adventure beneath Tokyo. Vaguely like The Goonies without any of the gross and even less plot, it's fun enough but unsubstantial and over quickly. Its most memorable feature, however, is the weird character art, in particular the red, turned-up noses all the characters sport, making it look like the entire cast has a cold. That distracts from the fact that the animation otherwise does an admirably good job of making 3D computer work look like hand-drawn cel art. Otherwise it's a largely forgettable film; there are a couple of notably colorful characters inhabiting the tunnels under Tokyo, and about the last third of the movie consists of one extended battle/chase sequence, but none of it has any emotional substance at all nor any honest thrills.

In the end it's a simple film that basically succeeds as a kids' adventure flick--it's fun, suitable for most ages, and doesn't talk down to the audience. It is also almost entirely without substance, drama, or even a sense of dramatic tension, so other than the notably odd character designs it's totally forgettable, particularly for something based on an Otomo story and backed with fancy computer animation.

US DVD Review

The US DVD release features Japanese-only audio in Dolby 5.1 and an English subtitle track, plus a good selection of extras: A lengthy making-of featurette (almost as long as the film), an audio commentary track with some of the production staff, interviews, the theatrical trailer, and a 12-page booklet with interviews, background information, and liner notes. It's also very pricey as of this writing.

Blu-ray

As with all of Bandai's Honneamise-label Blu-ray discs, this one shares a couple of features. One, it's entirely bilingual--the first thing you get to pick when firing up the disc is which language to show the menus in. Two, it is spectacularly expensive. I assume the latter is because of the former (the US may now share a region code with Japan, but videos still cost way more on that side of the Pacific), but it begs the question of whether a 40-minute kids' movie is worth in the ballpark of $50 (retail price $65, street currently around $45). The price actually isn't much different from the DVD version, but the answer is still "almost certainly not."

As for what it gets out of the Blu-ray treatment, again not much. Due mostly to the relatively soft visual style, there's almost nothing in the way of fine linework on the character art, and apart from a few scenes of Tokyo even the backgrounds aren't notably detailed or pretty, so all that extra resolution gets you little if any noticeable improvement. The soundtrack, similarly, doesn't contain anything that is going to show off the fancy Dolby TruHD 5.1 audio for those with sufficiently equipped sound systems. They didn't even bother to toss in an uncompressed 5.1 soundtrack for audiophiles, just stereo PCM. Then again, since the DVD costs nearly as much, if you have the hardware and simply must own the movie, you might as well go high-def.

Special features consist of a making-of featurette nearly as long as the movie, interviews with Otomo, the character designer, and the animation director, a commentary soundtrack on the feature itself, and the theatrical trailer. There's also a 12-page color booklet with some interesting liner notes, short interviews, and background info. Given that the visuals have little to gain from Blu-ray resolution, and the special features are no different from the DVD version, there's really nothing to make this a worthwhile Blu-ray purchase, particularly given the extravagant price. And that's before you take into account that the movie isn't all that good anyway.

Content Guide

The box is labeled 7-up, and despite quite a bit of fighting, that seems about right; it's on the realistic side but bloodless and there doesn't appear to be anyone seriously injured. The only thing of note are some general concepts about outcasts from society that might spur discussions with parents.

Violence: 1 - There's a lot of fighting, but it's entirely bloodless and even the dramatic tension is mild.

Nudity: 0 - Nothing whatsoever.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - Nothing.

Language: 1 - A bit of rough language does sneak into the subtitles.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a 1996 manga short by Katsuhiro Otomo of almost the same title (the movie version adds "Shin"/"new" to the beginning). The "Shin"/"Next" in the title is because it's effectively a sequel to the manga; the boys in this movie are using the diary of one of the kids in the manga, who is now an adult. There's no official English translation of the manga as of this writing.

The film also shares a chunk of its production staff with the Otomo film Steamboy; according to the liner notes, Sunrise studio was gearing up for a sequel to Steamboy after the first film was completed. When the project fell through, they decided to apply the computer techniques they'd been working on to a smaller project, and picked Otomo manga short to base it on. Otomo didn't, however, have much input into the movie past that.

Aside from the mostly-real Tokyo locales, there are a number of cultural references and in-jokes in the background; the liner notes explain them pretty clearly, and are worth reading.

Availability

Available in the US from Honneamise on subtitled (only) DVD and Blu-ray disc, and a little hard to find--anime-specific retailers carry Honneamise titles, but even Amazon doesn't stock them for some reason.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store