Steamboy (スチームボーイ) is a 2004 Japanese animated steampunk action film directed and co-written by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Sunrise, it is his second major anime as a director, following Akira (1988). The film was released in Japan by Toho on July 17, 2004.
Steamboy was the most expensive Japanese film ever produced, with a ¥2.4 billion (US$26 million) production budget, having been in production for ten years and utilizing more than 180,000 drawings and 440 CG cuts.
Plot
In 1863, where an alternate nineteenth century Europe has made tremendous strides in steam-powered technologies, scientist Lloyd Steam and his son, Edward "Eddy" Steam, have succeeded in discovering a pure mineral water in Iceland which they believe can be harnessed as a nearly unlimited power source for steam engines. An experiment in Russian Alaska goes terribly wrong, with Eddy being engulfed in freezing gases, but results in the creation of a spherical device. Three years later, Lloyd sends the device, along with its schematics, to his grandson (and Eddy's son), James Ray Steam, who works as a maintenance boy in Manchester, England, along with instructions to guard it. Members of "The O'Hara Foundation" arrive and attempt to steal the sphere, but Lloyd appears, stating that the device killed Eddy and bids Ray to flee and deliver the device to Robert Stephenson