However, its impoverished human citizens discriminate against robots, blaming them for their unemployment and being forced to live in the squalid lower levels of Metropolis.

His adopted son, Rock, leads a vigilante paramilitary organization known as the Marduks, tasked with destroying malfunctioning and rogue robots - including those that escaped from their designated zones in the lower city.

Meanwhile, Japanese private detective Shunsaku Ban and his young nephew, Kenichi Shikishima, have traveled to Metropolis to apprehend rogue scientist Dr. Laughton, wanted for organ trafficking and human rights violations.

Unbeknownst to Shunsaku, Red hired Laughton to secretly build a highly advanced android, modeled and named after his deceased daughter Tima.

As they search for a way back to the surface, the pair grow close as Kenichi protects Tima and her humanity evolves, both unaware that she is a robot.

Kenichi and Tima encounter a resistance movement of disgruntled humans, who stage an armed revolution against Metropolis's leaders and robot workers.

Disguised as a maid, Rock shoots Tima in the chest, exposing her internal circuitry before being shot and wounded by Red's men.

As the Ziggurat collapses and spreads destruction to the rest of Metropolis, Tima's programming deactivates and she falls, but is suspended by a circuit board attached to a cable on her arm.

A photograph shown during the end credits reveals that Kenichi eventually rebuilds Tima and opens a robot workshop bearing their names.

Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi find Mitchi after her creator, Dr. Charles Laughton, is killed and they protect her as they search for her parents.

Unlike Tima's desire to be human, the cause for Mitchi's destructive rampage in the manga's climax is the revelation that, as a robot, she has no parents.

It can be assumed that Kenichi fell in love with Tima, shown in many scenes when he blushes when he sees her writing his name so she wouldn't forget him.

[4] Osamu Tezuka had originally derived inspiration from Fritz Lang's 1927 German silent science fiction film of the same name, despite not actually having seen it.

During the days of Mushi Productions, Hayashi asked Tezuka if he wanted to let him make a feature based on the manga, but immediately rejected the idea.

[8] The Metropolis soundtrack consists mainly of New Orleans-style jazz music and orchestral score composed by Toshiyuki Honda and features Atsuki Kimura's cover of "St. James Infirmary Blues" and the ending theme "There'll Never Be Good-Bye" by Minako "Mooki" Obata.

When it was released in the US and other foreign countries by TriStar Pictures and Destination Films, it made a total of $4,035,192 (equivalent to $6,840,000 in 2023) in overseas territories outside of Japan.

[11] As the license of the German Metropolis is held by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, the film was released under the title Robotic Angel.

The site's critical consensus states that "A remarkable technical achievement, Metropolis' eye-popping visuals more than compensate for its relatively routine story.