Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White is an enthralling anime and easily the best-animated film you will see this year.

For grown-ups who can let the story wash over them without asking too many questions, it's a treat.

Tekk it or leave eet.

Anime enthusiasts will want to take a look, but the film is too uneven to serve as a good introduction to the form.

Since the movie more or less abandons all pretense of naturalism somewhere around its midpoint, in the end the expressionistic frenzy of light, movement, and color that takes over is enough to make it worth seeing.

Borrowing in equal measures from innocuous child fantasies and Street Fighter, the colorfully imaginative world of Tekkonkinkreet has its fair share of marvels.

Somewhat resembles Paprika, another recent piece of Japanimation. But director Michael Arias, a Tokyo-based American, doesn't fuse his striking graphics to a story anywhere near as satisfying.

The dazzlingly intricate backgrounds are a marvel, and though the jam-packed story occasionally trips over its own sentimentality, it quickly rights itself every time.