Asimov Solensan
Katerina Solensan
Bartender
Mafia Pursuers
Running Bull
Antonio, Carlos, and Jobin
Tijuana Police MONO Ship
Detonator Switch
Remote Control
Eye Drug Applicator
The bio terrorist behind the tanker explosion that killed 72 in Alba City.
With his long, unkempt hair and his black clothing, he has a menacing appearance. While he has no compunction about killing people, he doesn't take pleasure in it either. There seems to be no reason given for this.
A former Special Forces soldier and nanomachine weapon test subject, he was sent to the battlefield carrying a counter-nanomachine vaccine. However, when he saw the indiscriminate carnage unleashed on the battlefield by the butterflies, he lost his memories and everything except for his life.
His ultimate goal is to release a nanomachine virus on Halloween night in Alba City. However, why he wants to do this is ultimately unknown.
What is he trying to gain by standing atop the corpses of countless people?
A woman who appears before Spike multiple times as he purses a 300-million Woolong bounty, Electra has the hurried eyes of someone whose back is against the wall.
She was ordered by the military to hunt down and kill Vincent, her former lover. There's no doubt that her plan was to use her position in an attempt to save Vincent, however.
However, Vincent didn't hesitate for a second to pull the trigger. This caused her to view of Vincent, who had one supported her, to change.
Thus, she decides to take down Vincent, even if it kills her. Perhaps this was in order to fulfill her duty as a soldier. And so, the fated moment approaches...
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is set in Alba City. Floating inside of a water-filled crater on Mars and connected to the rest of the world via a bridge, this city is reminiscent of present day New York City.
However, Alba Tower, the site of Spike and Vincent’s final battle, is very similar to the Eiffel Tower. Rather than just being based on New York, Alba feels like a mish-mash of several large cities around the world.
An example of this would be the six-tiered sign that Spike looks at during his investigation. The top level is in Chinese and English and points toward a China Town-like area. The next tier is for the Alba City government and is written in Arabic and Chinese. Below that are Russian Town and Moroccan Street. These are written in both English and the respective native language of each area. If someone could only read one of the languages, they wouldn’t be able to understand the entirety of the sign. While this would have been prohibitive in the past, perhaps people would be able to manage better these days.
There’s also a lot to unpack as well in the different parts of the city you see as Spike wanders around looking for information. At first, he’s in an area resembling an American city from the 70’s and 80’s, but he ends up passing through a portion with European architecture and trains, before ending up on Moroccan Street. This shows the diversity of styles present in the city.
Alba City is depicted not only as a mix of countries, but also time periods. Brick buildings coexist alongside modern steel-framed ones, creating a contrast that captures Mars in 2071. Since the buildings couldn’t be more than 50 years old, the idea of that brick means old and steel means modern doesn’t quite apply, giving the city quite an odd feel. However, this strangeness was necessary to depict that a wide variety of people live here.
“It’s the world that’s gone insane,” Vincent says as he sets his sights on Alba City, a New York-inspired city that “compresses” the features of modern cities in both the East and West into “a world that doesn’t exist anywhere.”
“A fist fight that resembles dancing.”
While my first thought was old kung fu movies, the fight that we see in Session 01, “Asteroid Blues,” is a bit different.
This cathartic melee in an open café uses Hong Kong action movies as a motif and combines them with a stylishness that has created a unique feeling of “Bebopness.”
Set to the lively trumpet-heavy piece “Rush,” this combination of music and choreography creates a tempo unseen in most kung fu movies.
While kung fu movies create a sense of catharsis by showing the intensity and physicality of the fights, this is much more difficult to capture in animation.
By combining camera work that would be impossible to capture in live action and matching the choreography to music, this fight is imbued with a sense of rhythm and tempo that is unique to anime.
Capturing the intensity and speed of the attacks and accenting it with long and close-up shots creates a series of “cool moments” within the fight and matching it to music gives you the sense that you’re watching a fight that resembles dancing.
Instead of focusing on the tension of combat, this approach creates a new style of action only possible in anime, one that transcends images.