The Best Movie You've Never Seen : Robot Carnival

Robot Carnival is a beautiful 1991 anthology of anime shorts each by a different Japanese director. There is very little dialgoue, only beautiful images and the music of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Sadly, you probably haven't seen it. The movie has never been released in the United States on DVD and you can only find it now on incredibly expensive VHS copies or pricey DVD imports from Japan. Speculation has been that the difficulty of coordinating rights between different directors and all of the varied music rights have made a United States DVD difficult. But due to the magic of You Tube, I can show you some parts of this wonderful movie. Until someone objects and takes them down.

Up First: The Opening directed by Atsuko Fukushima and Katsuhiro Otomo



Not that should put you in the mood for a carnival. The second segment is Franken's Gears by  about a scientist trying to bring a robot to life directed by  Koji Morimoto



The third segment is the truly scary Deprive by Hidetoshi Omori



The fourth segment Presence: Directed by Yasuomi Umetsu is a haunting tale of a very lonely man with a great love for a robot.









Then the story takes a turn for the charming and upbeat with this perfect little slice of the 1980s (even if it was a 1991 movie ) called Star Light Angel: Directed by Hiroyuki Kitazume .  It always makes me smile to watch.



The entire history of the universe and the rise and fall of man is depicted in Cloud: Directed by Mao Lamdo.



A Tale of Two Robots -- Chapter 3: Foreign Invasion: Directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo is a bit of a steampunk/western/giant robot / slapstick comedy type of things. Probably my least favorite segment. I often do not get Japanese humor even though I love their cinema.






Nightmare: Directed by Takashi Nakamura proves that the machines are not out friends. I mean, we all know this is what they are secretly up to.





Ending: Directed by Atsuko Fukushima and Katsuhiro Otomo is pretty much self-explanatory. But lovely to watch. I have dream about this landscape.



Now if they would only kindly put this out in a deluxe Blu-Ray edition that I could spend $80 on, I would be thrilled.  I'm not going in-depth about every segment to tell you what you're seeing. I'd like you to watch and tell me what you see.