Black and White Rule Treasure Town

Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkon Kinkreet is one of those manga that doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules. Published in Weekly Big Comic Spirits starting in 1993, it follows two orphan kids living rough in Treasure Town—a city that feels like it was dreamed up by someone who’d read too much Moebius and spent too long in the wrong part of Osaka. Black is feral and dangerous, a small dark punk who fights like something cornered. White is otherworldly and barely tethered to reality, sweet in a way that makes him hard to protect. Together they own the streets, at least until the Kiddy Kastle corporation shows up with plans to flatten everything and rebuild it in their image—yakuza, religious fanatics, and hired muscle along for the ride.

The anime adaptation came from Studio 4°C, who were already known for doing strange, beautiful things. Treasure Town in motion is extraordinary—you can feel the weight of the city in every frame, all texture and threat and odd grace. The studio had that quality of making things look handmade even when they weren’t, and it suits Matsumoto’s line perfectly.

The film premiered in Japan in December 2006. I was already convinced by the trailer and hoping it would reach Europe without too long a delay. PingMag ran an in-depth making-of piece around the same time—worth tracking down if you want to understand how a manga this idiosyncratic becomes something you can actually watch.