By Bob Clark

When writing about the anime-musical, there are really only so many feature-length offerings to hold up as examples of the form, and certainly nowhere near as many as you’ll find in Western animation, where Disney and their imitators have all but made singing and dancing as natural for animation as, well, animation itself. Granted, there are plenty of Japanese works that feature lengthy song-sequences, and even several series that structure themselves entirely around characters who perform music (recent ones include the girl-band focused K-On! and others about high-school classical musicians). Music often finds itself one of the most integral parts of anime works, either on a small basis (episodes like Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s “Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!” or The Big O‘s “Legacy of Amadeus” contain character arcs defined primarily through their protagonists’ experiences with music) or on a long-term, thematic one (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo taking their stylistic cues from modern jazz and hip-hop culture, respectively). But by and large, works that takes their cue from music directly is something that’s an infrequent affair, which makes even a short work like Interstella 5555 such an interesting anomaly, both for the quality of the animation itself and for the intersection it marks between modern music and classic anime alike, pairing the electronica duo Daft Punk with the legendary creator of Captain Harlock, Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999, Leiji Matsumoto.

In the years since, Daft Punk’s affiliations with sci-fi nostalgia circuits has been clear enough to see in works like their score for the belated sequel Tron Legacy, where they even had a small cameo as a couple of DJ-computer programs in the digitized world hiding in the basement of Kevin Flynn’s arcade. At the time that Interstella 5555 was made, a little less than ten years ago, the idea of commissioning a series of music-videos in anime form to be stringed together as a kind of loose featurette might’ve seemed something of a stretch, but one that rings with a certain harmony of its time. Released in pieces on MTV and Cartoon Network, it aimed to be an inclusive work for two disparate fanbases, and represents part of this past decade’s increasing popularity for anime, even in a kind of Westernized mode. Daft Punk themselves collaborated on the basic story of the hour-long project, and asked Matsumoto to bring it to animation thanks to their love of his work since childhood. Though the effort would eventually be directed by Kazuhisa Takenôchi (whose work appears to consist entirely of occasional installments in the One Piece, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball franchises), Matsumoto’s visual design shines unmistakably through the somewhat more modern and flashy animation practices, giving it a distinctly retro vibe that fits the band’s mix of disciplines.

In terms of story, there isn’t much to report– a rocking band on a faraway planet of blue-skinned people is abducted by a scheming musical impresario who brainwashes them into climbing the top of the charts on Earth, all part of a centuries-long scheme of kidnapping musicians throughout the galaxy to enact some kind of hand-me-down secret society’s occult plot to rule to world, or something like that. Really, the narrative is literally there to provide an excuse to string a bunch of songs from the album Discovery together along with some killer animation that aims to do little more than tickle the fancy of a few nostalgic funnybones, which is about as high an ambition as any long-form anime music video concept album hybrid can afford. Along the way there’s time enough for something of an emotionally driven story to take shape with an intergalactic super-fan in a guitar-shaped starship going above and beyond the call of duty to rescue his favorite band from the clutches of Planet Earth, as well as some lazy, but sincere seeming notes struck about the soulless nature of the music and entertainment industries, always eager to seduce one fresh young artist or another sell out in return for a golden trophy or two. None of it goes terribly far, especially for anime– there’s little or no real sexual objectification that usually goes along with the A Star Is Born story-templates with all their archetypal casting couches, and definitely no mention of the drugs and dependency that usually mark the downward spiral of your typical Behind the Music three-hanky story. Here, there’s nothing but the sci-fi conspiracy theories of evil cults taking promising young aliens prisoner to rock hard on Earth until they wind themselves down to death (in other words, a theory about as likely as any other wishful thinking fairy-tale about Elvis, Janis or Morrison finding eternal life beyond the stars, in some UFO apotheosis).

And yet, there’s something to the way that Matsumoto’s stylish designs evoke a feeling of the 70’s that matches in a nicely anachronistic fashion with Daft Punk’s decidedly modern beats that gives the project a sweet sense of anime vertigo. Looking at the band’s members as they’re paraded through one gig or party after another on Earth, it’s impossible not to see the echoes of the mangaka‘s past creations reverberating through their feathery hair and high cheek-bones– Harlock, Tetsuro and especially the long-tall blonde Maetel are all recognizably present in the flourishes of our nameless characters, imbued with all the same, sad and lonely loveliness that’s always there in Matsumoto’s creations. There’s something especially poignant in seeing our world reproduced in the creator’s style, particularly during a fashion show midway through the film, which feels like an ideal blend of realism and caricature. The music itself doesn’t quite match the period that’s being evoked visually, but it keeps everything fresh and alive in a distinctly contemporary flavor (hearing Herb Alpert throughout would be all kinds of funky and cool, but it would date the proceedings horribly as well), such that we can reminisce the not-so-recent past through the sieve of the rose-tinted glasses of animation, ones that don’t always make the past look better, but at least adds a dimension of romanticism even to the darker and more depressing moments. As such, it’s an ideal introduction for anybody curious about Matsumoto’s contributions to the world of anime, but doesn’t necessarily want to invest too much in the full breadth of works like Yamato or the various versions of Galaxy Express 999, or deal with any kind of narrative complications. It gives you a faint, modernized whiff of nostalgia, a glowing memorial to the beauty of the past, just as it begins to fade.