is a 2004 Japanese animated steampunk action film produced by Sunrise, directed and co-written by Katsuhiro Otomo, his second major anime release as a director, following Akira (1988). The film was released in Japan by Toho on July 17, 2004. Steamboy was the most expensive Japanese anime film up until then with a () 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 James to flee and deliver the device to Robert Stephenson. After fleeing the O'Hara agents on his personal steam-powered monowheel, James briefly meets Stephenson on a train headed into Manchester, but James, along with the device, are captured by O'Hara agents in a dirigible. James is taken to London, where preparations are being made for the 1866 Great Exhibition, and meets Scarlett O'Hara St Jones, the spoiled granddaughter of the Foundation's head chairman, Archibald Simon O’Hara. He also discovers Eddy, alive but severely scarred and mechanized from his injuries in Alaska, working with O'Hara on the "Steam Castle"; an elaborate facility entirely powered by three devices called "Steam Balls," one of which was the device sent to James. James is enamored both by the castle, and his father's vision of using it to enlighten mankind, and volunteers to help complete the project. He also begins developing a love/hate friendship with Scarlett, who is attracted to him. James encounters Lloyd again, who was captured by O'Hara, but has escaped from his cell and is attempting to sabotage the castle, revealing that the Foundation's true intentions for the exhibition is to sell weapons of war. Lloyd shows