Reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Disney’s The Rocketeer, the film’s numerous high-tech gizmos-including piston-powered tanks, unicycles and airships-are a fascinating hybrid of old-world elements (mainly iron and steel) and futuristic fancifulness, and in a similar vein, Otomo blends traditional two-dimensional and modern computer animation while also marrying a distinctly Japanese aesthetic to his European story.

When Ray receives in the mail a “steam ball” (a device containing highly concentrated and powerful steam), he’s propelled into a high-flying adventure in which his idealistic grandfather and father-now a delusional cyborg intent on fulfilling his grand ambitions to bring science to the masses-battle for control of their jointly created “steam castle,” a technological marvel they plan to unveil alongside the day’s other innovative gadgets at London’s “Great Exhibition.” Ray Steam (voiced, in a strange gender-bending twist, by Anna Paquin) is a novice inventor in 1866 Manchester following in the footsteps of his notorious father Eddie (Alfred Molina) and grandfather Lloyd (Patrick Stewart), geniuses whose desire to harness the awesome power of steam led to disgrace, tragedy, and exile in America. Seventeen years (and countless imitators) later, Steamboy partially redeems Otomo’s legacy by supplying a coherent narrative to go along with its stunning imagery, though this newest effort-a familiar animé parable about the pitfalls of scientific progress and the tenuous alliance between man and machine-suffers from persistent preachiness and action overkill. Katsuhiro Otomo’s groundbreaking Akira is a double-edged (or double-barreled, as it were) classic, a marvel of science fiction animé artistry that nonetheless ushered in an unwelcome era of visually spastic, narratively convoluted Japanimation features.

Steamboy anime dubbed