Interstella 5555

Many people are familiar with the electronic band, Daft Punk, particularly their recent hit, Get Lucky (though from my experience, a lot of people know and love a song or two by them without even knowing the band-- which, as I'll get to later, may be just what Daft Punk themselves prefer).  Personally, I've considered myself something of a fan of theirs for a while, but I only recently got around to watching Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.  I was completely blown away.  

Interstella 5555 is a collaboration between Daft Punk, developer Cédric Hervet, and Leiji Matsumoto.  Matsumoto had been a childhood hero of the band, having worked on several Sci-Fi themed anime shows and films (the Captain Harlock series being one of the best known).  The resulting hour long film is beautiful thematically and visually, and the animation fits the tone and concepts of the album perfectly.  Daft Punk is a duo who have always put the music as a higher priority than their own image-- even wearing helmets to hide their faces.  Hence, it seems appropriate that the plot of Interstella 5555 centers on a pop band from another planet, as they are abducted, brain washed, and forced to abandon their identities to become performing machines.  

It was a difficult task to choose one segment to include here, needless to say, but I ended up settling on Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.  This is not only because the track happens to be one of my favorite Daft Punk songs, but also because the animation is quite possible to enjoy without the larger context of the entire work (though it does take on an entire new layer of significance when one knows the characters and their situation).  In this section, the four band members are forcibly being altered into their human counterparts in preparation for their new lives as drones of the delightfully over the top villain acting as their agent.