Tentacle-Free Anime: "Interstella 5555" (2003) Review
As anyone else in this world, music plays an important role in my life. It helps me calm, it helps me get through anger, and it helps me jam out. While I dabble in many genres and like a variety of tastes, my go-to and mainstay has and always will be dance music. Techno, trance, house, electro, hardcore, jumpstyle, disco, dubstep, whatever you want to call it; dance music covers quite a few subgenres and one of those is ''Progressive'', a genre that defines the very nature of the group Daft Punk and their futuristic off-the-hook sound. And while I personally feel their latest album wasn’t all that bad really, their older stuff is still some of the best in the industry, especially their "Discovery" album, which coincidentally has quite the tie-in to today’s review.
The story synopsis above is pretty much the basic bare bones of this story, but it’s really the way I would describe this movie as well. At its heart this is what it is, with so much more to show as the movie progresses, the story begins to unravel and the secrets hidden within are revealed. I said earlier that Daft Punk has a tie-in to the movie, specifically their Discovery album, well, and this where it becomes unfair to me as a critic; this movie was built and told around the album as basically an animated version of that album. Where it becomes unfair is now I have to think critically of both Leiji Matsumoto’s master storytelling and animation and Daft Punk’s music as a whole for this thing.
What I go through for you all.
Like many of Matsumoto’s stories, several characters used in this film are “recast” from other well-known stories and he has a very distinct art style, with short little guys with beady eyes, or tall fit, muscular men to tall, slim attractive women. A lot of his designs look the same, but the way he utilizes his limited design style to always make everyone important stand out is used masterfully, especially here in the large crowd scenes as people and aliens a like dance to the music. In the movie, the story revolves around -- and music comes from -- the main group The Crescendolls, which are the biggest music group in the galaxy. After they’re kidnapped and brainwashed, a space captain who is a humongous fan of the group and has a crush on the group’s lead female must travel to Earth and save them.
The Crescendolls
One thing that strikes me as unique about this movie is that while it plays to the backdrop of Daft Punk’s tracks, there is no dialogue except for what vocal lyrics string from the music. This is more or less a silent movie with a few sound effects that can be heard here and there, it’s a pure visual ride as you sink into the futuristic and jive feel and ‘discover’ what the story is offering up to you. It’s very easy to follow too, setting up a nice, easily digestible story of love, sacrifice and cultural impact that is rarely seen in anything surrounding music. Sometimes in musicals it’s how the music affects the main cast or the main character the most, where as here it’s literally about how music affects the world as a whole. 
The Space Captain
It’s a very optimistic tale; I’ll give it that. One problem I see is that many may not like the overly silent nature of the film, watching characters play out their roles without dialogue and react without saying as much as a single syllable. These aren’t the days of silent films anymore, though many still do get made as “experimental films” when once it was the main attraction, funny how that style of storyt has seemed to regress into obscurity. But if you can just allow yourself to just enjoy the music and stunning visuals placed in front of you, you’re in one for one hell of a ride. 
Earl de Darkwood, the evil manager
Speaking of the visuals, this movie is very bright. With pumping lights front and center throughout the whole thing it’s almost like a ravers’ wet dream with the sheer amount of bouncing bright colors as they move in sync to the music. This isn’t going to cause an epilepsy attack if you have it, at least it shouldn’t [TrashMutant.com does not take responsibility for any epilepsy attacks. - Ed.], but if you go to any kind of rave or find yourself on any sort of dance floor in this day and age most likely you’re going to be surrounded by bright flashing lights similar to what is seen in this movie. Finally, the music, what can I really say? It's Daft Punk through and through - it’s their album straight from beginning to end. This whole movie is as if you were listening to their album, but watching it animated. I did feel a few times that what I was watching on screen didn’t overly match the tone of the music being blasted into my ears but when you’re working around an album from beginning to end I know there’s only so much that can be done. And like an album, when a track ends, the next one starts up immediately which causes the movie to move at a breakneck pace. Thank god for slow Daft Punk tracks every now and then or this movie wouldn’t of had any slow, character defining moments. As a bonus treat, Daft Punk even makes a guest appearance in the movie as themselves, which I thought was pretty nifty to see. If you’re a Leiji Matsumoto fan, an animation fan, or even simply a Daft Punk fan you owe yourself to see this movie at least once. It’s fun, engaging, and if you can just watch this as one giant music video even, you’ll be all set to enter the time & space spanning musical epic that is Interstella 5555. Final Score: 4 Crescendoll members out of 5 (And there’s only 4 Crescendoll members) Have you seen "Interstella 5555"? Dig Daft Punk? Enjoyed the review? Let us know in the comments! 
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