It's 1941 but France is trapped in the nineteenth century, governed by steam and Napoleon V, where scientists vanish mysteriously. Avril, a teenage girl, goes in search of her missing scientist parents.
#sci-fi, steampunk, adventure
This was so INTERESTING!
French can do it. Also, the French dark humor is chef's kiss~.
And I'm being honest, despite some of the obvious conveniences, overall it's such a unique story and unique-looking style. Maybe for French viewers it won't be something out of ordinary, but I'm impressed. Because I love animation and it's always nice to see something that sticks out from the oridnary.
Avril lives in a world alternate to ours, where steam machines integrated and vastly influences Earth as a whole. Paris is a huge city full of concrete and iron pipes, it's all grey and desolate, since all the trees were wiped out. Literally. The heavy smog hovers in the sky, making people wear protective gear like gas masks. No one had made a grand scientific discovery in years, since all the scientists are kidnapped by unknown organization or they're made to work for the Empire and also disappear.
I love it when the idea behind a story is simple. In this case even ironic. The disappearance of the living world of flora and fauna is directly connected to humanity's overconsumption, but at the same time it is the result of all the scientists being kidnapped and not making new discoveries. And there is of course a secret behind disappearance (in spoilers).
Avril had lived alone since her parents disappeared, her family are all prominent scientists and they worked on some absolute solution, a potion that will allow a living organism to regenerate and survive in the harshest environment.
Avril only has a talking cat Darwin that was with her for all these years and Avril continues to replicate the potion for the sake of Darwin's survival. Only to find herself involved in the disappearance of scientists and a big plan behind it.
The animation is amazing. When I saw the poster with two Eiffel towers I was like - heck yeah, I want to see it, also all that steampunk gear, so exciting. The style is disticnt thanks to the style of Tardi (also illustrated Adèle Blanc-Sec, which I reviewed a while ago), the colors are bold, as well as lines of artwork. The atmosphere is immersive thanks to many details that happen in the background. For example like pedestrian wear masks or how a black dust flies when Avril dusts her jacket, to showcase how heavy the smog is. Overall despite how desolate and bare the city of Paris looks like, it also looks quite cool with all the piping and steam.
I think even if technical part uses a lot of conveniences (like for example the world looks desolate, but what about food and crops, it is not mentioned) you can let it go while watching, because it just looks cool. Some are made outright funny, but I did laugh at them instead of being - well, this is ridiculous. Indeed, and this is why it made me smile.
Because why not?
SPOILERS:
It's not really hard to connect the dots when you see two intelligent (able of speaking and thinking) lizards escape from a scientist's lab (Avril's ancestor) and from then on scientists around the world started to disappear and the progress stopped. But this also triggered the ecological devastation. But when you think about the "big plan" by these two lizards you'd say - what?
Because indirectly their actions caused the world to be devastated and they claimed how people will kill each other one day, while they want to save the planet and spread the trees to make the earth almost into a jungle and because the jungle will be injected with the potion it will not be damaged or destroyed an dwill be regenerating, marking a new era. This is why I say it's ironic, you blame humanity, while these two lizards caused so much harm as well.
Ridiculous part is also about the very ending when all their children started fighting against each other.
Ironic, isn't it?
So overall I really enjoyed it 😄
RATE: 9/10.
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