I saw it.  I loved it.  I want cels!!  IMHO, one 
of my favorite recent anime movies.  I did a 
review a while ago that i posted to RAAM, but 
it's long gone, I'm sure.  Here's a copy of the 
text that I wrote.

This message was written on 6/3/2001

I went and saw Metropolis yesterday.  (based on 
the Osamu Tezuka manga, directed by Rin Taro, 
animation by studio Madhouse)  All I can say is, 
this is IMHO one of the best movies I've seen yet 
this year.  Of course, the new Miyazaki film 
isn't out yet.  ^^  But I REALLY liked 
Metropolis.  In fact, I'm determined to see it at 
least one or two more times before it leaves the 
theater.  

Technically, I think there are some problems with 
the CG animation and the 2D animation.  They 
don't usually look very good together.  And there 
are several CG scenes that I think I've seen 
before in one of the Final Fantasy games.  ^_-  
And I'm not sure I liked some of the transitions 
between scenes.  But that's not the real strength 
of the film.

So what's it about?  The story is a familiar one, 
especially if you're familiar with Lang's 
Metropolis, Blade Runner, Bubblegum Crisis, etc.  
All of those share elements with this movie.  It 
starts off with a celebration in the city/country 
of Metropolis, which looks like a futuristic 
version of New York.  But as quickly becomes 
evident, underneath the beautiful appearance of 
the city there are serious problems.  Robots, 
built to serve humans, have become hated by many 
of the people because they have taken so many 
jobs.  Robots, in turn, sometimes turn against 
the humans, and so it isn't an uncommon sight to 
see armed military shooting down the rebellious 
machines (with, it appears, very little regard 
for safety of human bystanders).  A police 
detective from Japan (Hige) comes to Metropolis 
with his young nephew (Kenichi) to find Professor 
Lauton? (Rooton).  Teaming up with a robot police 
officer (Pero), they trace the professor, but 
when they get to his lab it's in flames (the 
reason is a major plot point that I'm not going 
to spoil here).  Anyway, Kenichi gets seperated 
from his uncle, but in the fire finds a beautiful 
girl (Tima) who doesn't seem to know anything.  
Of course, she's not a normal girl.  But she 
doesn't know that, and neither does Kenichi.  
After the two of them escape the fire, they spend 
a large chunk of the film trying to escape from 
Rock (my favorite character, who I don't really 
want to say too much about), who is determined to 
destroy Tima.  The plot gets much more 
complicated from there, and includes a Marxist 
revolution and a military coup.  ^^  Yeah, part 
of me really enjoys that kind of stuff (I'm an 
LoGH fan too).

message continued in next post. ..