Fortean blog Mysterytopia takes note of an 80-year-old Japanese robot built for the Japanese emperor Hirohito in 1928. According to Mysterytopia, the animatronic oddity was misplaced in Germany before eventually being returned to Japan where it was retrofitted with modern innards and brought back to life.

Watching the video (embedded below, courtesy once again of Mysterytopia) I’m reminded of the parade scene in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, also included so you don’t have to scour YouTube yourself.

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There’s a certain irony to Vexille that sets in quickly after the opening credits. The film’s central theme is the subjugation of humanity by an increasing reliance on technology. And yet, the film is itself an example of the very sin the screenwriters seek to purge.

Following closely on the massive success of the CGI film Appleseed, director Fumihiko Sori (aka ‘Sori’) uses the same 2D/3D approach that made the former film a smash hit amongst anime enthusiasts, both here and abroad. Instead of adapting another well-known work, however, Vexille is an entirely new universe, albeit one that borrows heavily from Shirow-san in more ways than one. The result is a film that *almost* succeeds despite itself, a beautiful-looking but fairly run-of-the-mill experience that reminds you of better films, but doesn’t quite achieve their level of success.

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