Robot Carnival (1991)

Robot Carnival

Release Info

Released in 1991. Production and animation by APPP.

Plot Summary

In the 1980s, nine up-and-coming Japanese animators were each given the chance to create a short animated work with “robots” as the general theme. Unlike the numerous other robot-themed anime of the era, these were to be created without giving any consideration to commercial viability, merchandise sales, or what any of the other animators would be doing. The result is what is commonly referred to as “anime's Fantasia”: an incredibly high-quality anthology collection of visually disparate stories ranging in tone from the surreal to the absurd. Universally understandable due to the near-complete lack of spoken dialogue, and now given a high-definition restoration, this masterpiece remains just as captivating over 30 years later.

My Thoughts

This movie's a great classic. It's effectively an animation festival style compilation of short films, offering a wide variety of tones and styles. Some stories are sad, some are exciting, some are bizarre and highly artistic. I fondly remember Robot Carnival because it premiered on the Sci-fi channel in the mid-90s. Anime was new to me at the time, so this movie left quite an impression and hyped me up to pursue more anime. Any fan of retro anime should watch this.

Screenshots

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Buy From Amazon

You can buy this movie from Amazon. It goes for around $20-40 (US).

Official Streaming

In the United States, Robot Carnival is available for streaming on Prime Video. If you're a subscriber, you can watch it for free with ads. If you want an ad-less experience, you can rent or buy it.

Watch on Prime Video

The Prime Video app is available on every set-top box (Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, etc.).

Download

Robot Carnival can be watched or downloaded from Archive.org (Internet Archive), or downloaded via torrents from Nyaa. These sites are the best, safest, and most dependable resources to get anime for free.

Watch on Archive.org

Download from Nyaa