“Metropolis is the new milestone in anime. It has beauty, power, mystery, and above all... heart.” James Cameron’s praise is no exaggeration. Released in 2001, Metropolis is a collaboration spanning three generations of Japanese animation masters: based on Tezuka Osamu’s 1949 manga of the same name, directed by Rintaro of Galaxy Express 999, and written by Otomo Katsuhiro of Akira. In a vast metropolis where humans and robots are divided by class, a boy named Kenichi meets Tima, a robot girl who has lost her memory. As Tima is revealed to hold the key to the city’s fate, the towering Ziggurat hurtles toward catastrophic collapse. 5 years in the making and backed by one of the largest budgets in Japanese animation at the time, the film sets Tezuka’s signature rounded characters against breathtaking digitally rendered cityscapes, creating a striking dialogue between animation’s past and present. The sight of the city collapsing to the sound of Ray Charles’s ‘I Can′t Stop Loving You’ is unforgettable. True to Cameron’s praise, the film offers a visual experience that will stay with audiences forever. (SONG Kyung-won)