Anime: Tekkon Kinkreet (2006)

Tekkon Kinkreet is an anime that has impacted me in so many ways, I just cannot wait to share my opinion and review it.
Let's just start with a quick summary of it.
I am going to try to keep it short, simple and a spoiler-free review with a pretty basic structure : talking about the art, story, characters and the sound.
All of this aside, let's get into reviewing this adaptation of Matsumoto Taiyou's masterpiece manga "Tekkon Kinkreet"

Treasure Town, a city ruled by the stray cats, two orphans known as Black and White, beating down anyone trying to take their streets, be it a thug or a yakuza.
When mysterious enterpreneurs appear with the intention of tearing down Treasure Town in order to replace it with an amusement, Black and White face their greatest enemies yet. It's left up to Black and his destructive nature to save the city and up to White to save Black from himself.

ART :
Tekkon Kinkreet is an anime with gorgeous animation and a very unique and bizzare art-style.
The backgrounds have amazing detail and the characters are very simple, with properly chosen colors, it has great contrast between the backrounds and characters and is simply a joy to look at.

STORY :
The story has a simple premise, made deeper and greater by the characters.
Tons of tension, drama and careful and well thought out plot points with great symbolism.

CHARACTERS :
The best part of the movie, no doubts.
These are some of the deepest and most painfully human characters in any anime, each and everyone fighting his own demons.
Even the side characters have a really good amount of personality and thought put behind them. This all makes up for a convincing story telling.
Great characters have never been a burden to a good premise.

SOUND:
Just like everything else, the sound is superb.
We have the OST done by Plaid, it's beautiful and fits the tone of the show so well, atmospheric and always plays in the right place at the right time.
The ending theme is performed by Asian Kung Fu Generation and serves for a very fitting song to end it all, with a very calm start, leading up to an emotionally packed chorus and ending it off calmly, just like it started.

The voice acting is superb as well. The voice actors did a fantastic job, there are no exaggerated and unfitting sounds. Some of the most convincing and real voice acting I have heard in an anime.

Do I recommend it? You bet I do!
Tekkon Kinkreet isn't for everyone, it's kinda artsy and attracts a niche audience + not many people can understand the symbolism.
One thing this anime relies heavily upon is the character dynamic between our main characters, Black and White.
So if their dynamic doesn't click with you. There is a high chance you might not like it that much.
But as one of my personal favourites, I'd suggest you watch it either way.

Tekkon Kinkreet is an anime movie that takes influences from famous western movies such as “The Godfather“, “City of God“, “The Boondock Saints” and “Rain Man” and spices things up with some Takeshi Kitano-ish story telling. The result makes for an intricate and multilayered journey that seems to be easily overlooked as ‘simple’, merely because it seduces you into feeling content with having scratched only its surface.

This will not be another review of which you can find plenty on the interwebs (and probably far better than I could do). Instead this will be my interpretation of the events – in a way a post-view analysis – to make an argument for Tekkon Kinkreet’s complexity or simply to help you make sense of its plot. If you have not seen the movie before, beware of spoilers and the likely influence this will have on your viewing experience.

***spoilers ahead***

Tekkon Kinkreet picks up a few different themes and presents them alongside each other. Most noticeably the Yin-Yang symbolism which is portrayed with the two brothers. It is important to notice from here on out that the characters’ names are White (Shiro) and Black (Kuro).
Shiro is the innocent one who shows clear signs of autism. At several points in the movie we are witness to his vivid and colorful imagination. His interactions with others seem offbeat and his mental development is clearly delayed. Kuro often cannot understand what his brother is going on about while Shiro is cheerfully dancing to his own tune. The old man whom they are friendly with points out how surprising it is for Shiro to be completely unscathed by the city’s dark side. “No one so uncorrupted belongs here”.
The way things unfold, we are made to believe that Kuro is the one taking care of Shiro. However, once Shiro is taken into custody by the police, we realize it might have been in fact vice versa all along. Kuro (Yin) - who has lost his anchor – cannot function any longer. He becomes deranged and violent, up to the point where he even takes a puppet for a substitute of his lost counter-part (Yang). The forces tilt so far out of balance that Kuro’s inner demon materializes, the man-eating mythical ‘Minotaur’. In the meantime, Shiro’s imagery continually darkens - culminating in his extreme screaming fit, which symbolizes the battle between light and darkness within the brothers (who can be considered one at this point). Together, they overcome the imbalance and reach a blissful conclusion.

The Yin-Yang conceptualizes the interdependence of opposing forces. People are not ‘white’ or ‘black’, they are all kinds of shades of grey. Even with good things there can be a ‘too much’. Ever noticed how annoying these do-gooder anime characters can get once they start preaching about their superior morals? There are many applicable real life examples. Society rewards extraversion, but too much can turn into narcissism. Agreeableness is the core of harmony, yet if you take it too far you will be on the way to self-denial. Ambition means striving for success, its extreme will lead to obsession. Chinese philosophy has recognized this fact of life long ago – and Shiro and Kuro are here to remind us of this principle once again. Kuro wants to protect his world (“my city”) and therefore gets rid of Shiro. You have to become a beast in order to kill one. But he needs Shiro to restore his inner balance once the battle is fought. In a ‘Fight Club’-ian way this might have led to the conclusion that the two had been one all along.

Besides this struggle of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ there is also the underlying theme of coming to terms with one’s own self. The drawn out sequence between the Minotaur and Kuro seems to pay homage to NGE’s ending. The scar on Kuro’s hand will remind him of what slumbers inside him and its visibility symbolizes his acceptance of this ‘dark passenger’ (as Dexter would call it). But acceptance means also to move forward, to break out of the cycle. For most of his life he remained in self-deception of his identity (his true being and role in the world). Stuck in the misconception that he was the ruler of a city and caretaker of his brother. With the illusion shattering in a most cathartic way he could let go of these misguided notions and find himself in a much more beautiful place alongside the person he most appreciates. In the end he clearly knew what he was capable of, what he truly desires and needs to live on. The final scene shows him looking at his scar – deep in thought – and then jumping jubilantly into the water. I guess that’s what it means to live with your inner demons.

The other prevailing theme is that of changing times – portrayed with the struggling yakuza, reminiscent of the “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas”. Of course this change is brought about by the biblical “Snake”, tempting with money and power. Suzuki’s moral objections are meaningless because time moves on relentlessly. Kimura is unwillingly turned into the Harbinger of this new era of profit and greed – leading to the most intense moment of the movie (in my opinion). “The sins of the fathers…” – the never-ending spiral of violence and hate.
Besides the environmental (inter-individual) change, we also see in Kimura the intra-individual change. The news of fatherhood makes him cherish life and rethink his choices. Alas, if adapting was that simple, humanity would be rid of most of its problems. Kimura finds his somber end in yet another incredibly well directed and intense moment – almost as if mentioned in passing. And the spiral of violence continues yet again.
Not making the right choices or making the right choices too late – is that what it means to be human? While both Suzuki and Kimura are introduced as sleazy and cold-hearted yakuza, they felt genuinely human right before and in the moments of their death. The tragedy of these characters depicts the gravity of the consequences of our actions we ultimately and inevitably conjure – the causality of things. While Shiro and Kuro complemented each other to the point of merging identities – in order to overcome their crisis – Suzuki and Kimura (father and son) were not so fortunate. Maybe if the father had taught his son anything besides “how to whack someone” – and even that he couldn’t do (ironically) to his father’s satisfaction.

In the end we are left with several threads that intertwine at several points in the movie, yet end up separately. They leave a lot of room for interpretation, because after all ‘showing’ is much more fun than ‘preaching’.
I could probably go on for a while. If the meaning of all the symbols and allegories was so simple to deduce, I wouldn’t be here - writing down my thoughts – which were initially hazy at best. In fact, many more things can be said about this movie and seen differently than I have. But isn’t that what makes for great story-telling? Go (re-)watch it and find out for yourself :)