I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Otomo’s epic tale works better on the page than it does on the screen, though it’s easy to see why Otomo felt the lengthy motorcycle chases and fight scenes were swell fodder for a movie. Ditto for the setting: what artist wouldn’t want the chance to rebuild a city as complex and ultra-modern as Tokyo from the ground up? The story, however, demands the more intimate medium of print, as those chases and fights seem urgent and kinetic on the page, an essential tool for drawing the reader into the story, rather than an opportunity for the animators to dazzle audiences with their technical prowess. Likewise, the story’s setting feels more claustrophobic in black and white than it does in color — the perfect place for a sinister military operation to unfold. The series’ length, too, is a factor; the movie compresses over 2,000 pages of storytelling into two hours, trimming some of the manga’s more interesting subplots and secondary characters in order to accommodate the explosions and high-speed chases.