Robot Contest (2003) User Reviews (3)

A Nutshell Review: Robocon (Robokon)

[DICK STEEL · 8/10 · 21 October 2006]

Robocon is today's third movie, and the most satisfying one of the day's selection. Written and directed by Tomoyuki Furumaya, this movie's premise allowed for a sneak peek into one of Japan's many robotic competitions.

The pretty Masami Nagasawa (last seen in Crying Out Love at the Center of the World) stars as lazy girl Satomi, who got assigned a stint, against her wishes, at her school's Robot Club. However, it's not the premiere club that she got assigned to, but the "B" team where the team members are hardly cooperative, made up of a motley bunch of losers. There's the ineffective soft spoken captain of the team, the genius arrogant designer, and a technician who dropped out but decided to join them again when the team had inexplicably entered the Nationals through a technicality. Her role in the team? She's the designated driver, the operator of the machine, needing to learn how to be one with the robot through the use of the remote control.

In the spirit of the theme of this year's film festival, naturally a whole section of the movie has put focus on how this group of students undergo boot camp - in a training regime at a beach resort - to build camaraderie, trust and friendship as they spend their off hours in designing and fine tuning their prototype YET-13, into Boxhund, their entry for the finals. It's like a coming of age movie, with the characters developing skill sets, and in the further discovery of their strengths and weaknesses, combined with their willingness to change for the better, not just for themselves, but for the team.

Although the narrative's pretty straightforward, it managed to create a sense of tension and a highly charged environment as our team challenges their competition through various round robin stages, and it is this part of the film that showcased the innovation and ideas of some of the robots, their wacky designs, and various functionalities. It's not easy just to build the robot, but how to maintain it through various stages, to think on your feet to solve technological challenges and the need for maintenance under time limit. Also, it takes a lot of with to try and outplay the competition, and every stage of the competition, just brings about the right amount of challenges, strategies, and how they are overcome. You'll also come to appreciate many of the rules put in place for the competition, and probably will pique your interest to learn a lot more.

This is a highly recommended film, and I suspect it is already amongst the movies that I'll come to enjoy from the festival.

Technology can be cool

[Andy-296 · 8/10 · 14 November 2006]

There are not many movies whose subject is (at least, partly) engineering (in fact, I can't think of any one right now). In this Japanese movie, groups of high school students compete with each other as to whom can build the best robot that can pass over a series of obstacles. The format is somewhat familiar: a team of underdogs who defeat all odds and get up getting the top award, but instead of centering in sports or singing, the contest is centered on technology (which hopefully makes the subject cool among teenagers). Also, one can reflect on Japanese fascination with robots. The movie itself is very conventional in style, but it scores in centering the film around Satomi, a lazy and apparently not very bright girl who gets into the team in order to get extra credits. Despite being surrounded by male nerds she has very little in common with, she manages anyway to make the move that gets their team the victory (OK, that part is not very realistic, but is heartwarming anyway).

The battlefield of inspiration and technology

[ushiros · 9/10 · 18 June 2004]

This film is based on a real technological competition opened every year in Japan since 1988.

Satomi (NAGASAWA Masami) is a student of a technical college. She is a lazy girl and poor at both study and club activities. One day, a teacher tells her she is short of credits and needs to have extra lessons. More lessons will be killing her, but the teacher gives her a proposal that if she joins the second robot club of the college and takes part in the coming RoboCon with the club, he will accept that as the credit.

"Robot Contest" or RoboCon is competed by one hundred and twenty-four teams from sixty-two technical colleges - two teams from each college. Every team consists of one robot and three members of crew - a captain, an operator and a mechanic. The captain of Satomi's team is the club leader Yotsuya (ITO^ Atsushi), who has dropped out of the first robot club of the college because it is too tightly organized, but is worried about too few members of his club and his small gift of robot operation. The mechanic is Aida (OGURI Shun), who is a lonely genius - having enough gifts in technological fields and no cooperation. And the operator is Satomi, who has never operated a robot before. Their robot is named "BOXhund", designed with outstanding ideas but still incomplete .

The matches are a single elimination tournament. Two teams compete to make their robot carry more objects to the respective goal within three minutes. The design of the robot is free while it meets some requirements - the weight, the size when it stands still, the power supply, the budget, and so on. The first robot club wins the preliminary matches and proceeds to the final stage like every year; the second robot club loses the first round like every year. But it is not usual that the second robot club is invited to the final stage as one of two teams by recommendation of the judges. They have praised the design concept of "BOXhund".

Satomi encourages the other members to win the final stage. Her team's miserable defeat in the first round has awoke her long-sleeping competitive spirit. But they have a lot of problems to face - the incomplete robot, Satomi's poor operation technique, little cooperation between the members, and having only a few months until the final stage.

It is touching that the club members try to make their way to the final top.

The match-ups between two robots, this movie's highlight scenes, are realistic and suspenseful. And this film has a lot of good humor. The leading actress, NAGASAWA Masami also stars in the latest top one box-office film, "Crying Out for Love at the Center of the World." (9 out of 10)

• USHIRO Satoshi