For those new to Takahide Hori‘s surreal stop-motion science fiction masterpiece, Junk World is the prequel to Junk Head. Even if you haven’t seen the middle film of the trilogy, thankfully there isn’t much you need to know going in. What gets explained about the Mulligans, robots made by humans to serve as slave labour droids who eventually rebelled, covers the basics, and as for why one droid has declared himself god at the start of the film, well, that’s the mystery.
It seems one of them didn’t fully evolve beyond its programming. His name is Robin (Souko Matsuoka) and he’s loyal to Captain Torys (Atsuko Miyake), who leads a team of humans to a summit to negotiate new terms. That’s how the moment felt to me, anyway. The rest of the film goes through the motions of showing just how fragile that peace is, while introducing new threats along the way. And the timeline gets muddled fast, with time-travel jumps back and forth that had me feeling lost more than once.
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