Interstella 5555: 5ecrets of the 5tellar 5tar 5ystem has become my latest of obsessions. Now lets get one thing right out on the table. I don't really dig daft punk. I hated "Around the World". I mean HATED it. Part of it was the instant dislike for anything that achieves that level of popularity, but part of it is that the track itself, wasn't really all that interesting. It just wasn't that good. (now Rollin and Scratchin was cool.) It spawned an entire genre of talkboxy tracks, culminating in everyone believing in life after love. (or was it love after love? who cares?)
Pretty much after that, I lost track of daft punk. So when 2001 came and went, and their Discovery album was released, along with "One more Time", I was blissfully unaware of its saturation, as a result of my rock-living-under-ness, I can truly enjoy that song.
Add to that a particularly good pair of Hoffman Lenses, and some good friends, and you have a movie worth watching, and music worth listening too. So what is Interstella 5555? It is a Music Video of the entire Discovery album, or it is Anime without any dialog. The basic plot is that 4 Musician Aliens (Octave, Stella, Arpegius and Baryl) are abducted by an evil record company executive (The Earl of Darkwood) and taken back to earth, and a 5th alien (Shep) must save them from their fate. The story has a Final Fantasy-like mood. I am not sure if that is just part of Japanese storytelling in general or what, but I dig it. Lots. In fact, there could be (and should be!) an Interstella 5555 video game.
There are some other interesting elements to this story. Lotsa numerology here such as: '5555' Where the band features 4 members but Shep makes a 5th. I'll leave it to you to figure out the rest. Remember "Everything is directly, or indirectly related to the number 5" is an
Erisian Mystery. The Invasion during "One More Time" and "Aerodynamic", and the scene during "Harder Better Stronger Faster" are worth seeing if you are CyberFetishists.
The animation is full on 80's style Anime. Its both bad (The lypsyncing is horrible) and well done. It is 00's anime doing 80's anime. Baryl the drummer is done entirely in the mouth
'Real tiny when it's closed; ridiculously huge when it's open' style. There are some very cute characters in here, espceially at the very end (my favorite part).
Watch for the cameo appearance of Daft Punk during "High Life". Quite funny. Even funnier if you can catch what they are 'saying' You might have to use your pause button for that. There is also a great little football (soccer) game between Japan and France (being the nationalities of the 2 contributors of this film).
In short, plenty of eye candy and funny references, inside jokes, and goodness. Get your Hoffman Lenses on and give it a watch.
