The movie opens by explaining the alternative world in which it is set: a world which differs in two key ways from the one we know; the great scientists of the 19th century disappear in unexplained circumstances, leaving us stuck in the age of steam. Electricity is no better understood than in the time of the Greeks.
The second great difference concerns the Franco-Prussian war. On the eve of the war, the French Emperor visits a scientist who is working on a project to produce super-beasts, and ultimately super-soldiers. When seeing the scientist has instead produced intelligent, articulate salamanders, his rage results in the destruction of the lab - and his own death as it explodes. His son signs a peace treaty with the Germans, and, war averted, France and Germany live alongside one another competing instead in their overseas territories.
It is a Steampunk world, but generally better thought out than the typical rather airy world implied by that. The relentless consumption of coal and charcoal have denuded Europe of forests; the choking smog that results from coal-powered everything leaves the inhabitants choking their way about the cities, and countrysides a barren hellscape. Not too much toodle-pip, what-ho, brass widgets and have at the bad guys; it is closer in character to the Difference Engine, Gibson and Sterling’s far more dystopian vision of such an alternative future.
In the early 20th century, when the film is set, the competition between the great powers for the vast resources of the American continent turns into a long, but not all-out war of the seas and across the Canadian north; scientists live in fear: if they are not taken by the mysterious entity that seized their 19th century forbears, they are hunted by the French government, desperate to develop some new tools for their arsenal. In this context April, as an eight year old, aids her parents and grandfather in their secret lab, until disaster strikes her family, too. Left with only her talking cat to raise her, we next see her a decade later, working on the same immortality serum as her parents: not for the Emperor, but to save her dying paterfamilias, Darwin the cat.
Adventure, of course, beckons: the fate of her family, the salamanders, the nature of the disappearances will all become clear over the course of the movie. It is beautifully animated; April is bold, brave, and resourceful. She does not drop back into being a damsel in distress, and delighted Ada, who saw it with me. Tardi’s vision of the alternative universe and its future is politically pointed without belabouring the point, and the action and adventure is well-paced. Hugely fun, and I’d highly recommend it.