Gunnm (1993) (V)

Director:

Hiroshi Fukutomi

Writers:

Yukito Kishiro (comic) and
Akinori Endo (writer)

Genre:

Animation | Action | Crime | Drama | Sci-Fi

Plot:

This movie takes place in a distant future, and is the story of a the young cyborg Gally, who is found on a scrapheap by the Cyberdoctor Daisuke Ido...

Plot Keywords:

Future | Bounty Hunter | Cyborg | Box Office Flop | Manga

Cast

Miki Itô	...	Gally (voice)
Shunsuke Kariya	...	Ido (voice)
Kappei Yamaguchi	...	Yugo (voice)
Mami Koyama	...	Chiren (voice)
Shigeru Chiba	...	Vector (voice)
Kôji Totani	...	Zavan
Kazuyuki Sogabe	...	Gime (voice)
Takumi Yamazaki	...	Tanji (voice)
Ryûzaburô Ôtomo	...	Grewcica
Michitaka Kobayashi	...	Rasha (as Sanshiro Nitta)
Kazuhiko Kishino	...	Gonz
Naoki Makishima
Shinobu Satouchi
Tomoko Maruo
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Laura Chapman	...	Dr. Chiren (voice)
John French	...	Guryushika (voice: English version)
Tiffany Grant	...	Female Victim (voice)
Matt Greenfield	...	Grewcica (voice)
Tamsin Hollo	...	Chiren (voice: English version)
Guil Lunde	...	Doc Ido (voice)
Tristan MacAvery	...	Vector (voice)
Stuart Milligan	...	Ido (voice: English version)
Larissa Murray	...	Alita (voice: English version)
Rick Peeples	...	Gonz (voice)
William Roberts	...	Gime (voice: English version) (as Bill Roberts)
Spike Spencer	...	Yugo (voice)
Kurt Stoll	...	Number 10 (voice)
Edward Wakefield	...	Yugo (voice: English version)
Brett Weaver	...	Rasha (voice)
Amanda Winn Lee	...	Gally (voice)

Also Known As:

Battle Angel
Battle Angel Alita

Runtime:

54 min | Argentina:60 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Australia:M | UK:15 | USA:R | Iceland:16

Company:

K.S.S.

Trivia:

The kanji that accompanies the Gunnm title literally means "gun dream". This kanji compound would normally be read as "juu mu", but manga artist Yukito Kishiro used the English word "gun" (rendered as "gan") for the "gun" kanji. Therefore, the actual pronunciation of Gunnm is "Ganmu".

Movie Connections:

Alternate language version of Battle Angel (1998) (V)

androids, romance, sci-fi, what more do you need?

just as a movie, the android Gally is put together by technical and live parts that together work as an emotional unit. In this future the borders between machine and man is wiped out and cybernetic parts are as respected as biological. A future like this might not be impossible with the growing tolerance of body enhancements such as plastic surgery and piercing.

This is an anime movie that succeed to deliver so much more emotion and vitality than many many live-action movies. The upcoming live action movie's actors will never succeed to reflect emotions as the animated eyes of these anime-characters.

For me, this is in first hand a love story, one of the most touching i've seen. The fact that Gally is a robot and might not know how to love is never put up. No, the plot is more sophisticated than "is an android capable of loving?". Gunnm is about social classes, chasing dreams and most of all finding a place for those refusing to be apart of the world of violence they are thrown in to.

I love this movie, I absolutely do, maybe my opinion is colored by me being very sensitive to the "robot/man - man/robot" theme, i often dream about androids wanting to be human ore humans finding out they are human, and what more suitable theme for a movie than androids to raise questions about humanity and sympathy?

At first the whole thing with Gally being built as a "warrior" machine fails to impress me, I know It's a vital part of the plot but the fighting parts... It's just taking pleasure in super-violence, the monsters are really but-ugly. But then I figured the violence-theme is really just contributing to the sense of this grim fictional-world and the contrast to this which is the love story of the film. The two sides of Gallys persona is highly contributing to the complexity of the whole movie. Though i still consider it to be some unnecessary amount of "gore".

Make sure to see this before the Cameron live-action in 2009!