A nursing bed transforms into a sentient mecha, and the movie commits so completely to that absurd premise that it becomes the perfect vehicle for a brutal argument about what we do with the people we're done raising. The animation is Otomo at his most inventive, every frame dripping with mechanical detail and anarchic energy that shouldn't work but does. It's a satire that never winks at the camera, never lets you forget that Mr. Takazawa is trapped inside a machine built to replace his humanity, not preserve it.

A high-tech Z-001 bed is meant to spare the younger generation the work of caring for the old by tending to every need of an elderly patient automatically. When college student Haruko Mihashi, who volunteers as an at-home nurse, sees her patient Kijuro Takazawa suddenly taken away to become the machine's first test subject, she starts to doubt the hospital's methods and the ethics of replacing human compassion with technology. Her concern deepens when a computerized message reaches her asking for help. She and her friends slip into Takazawa's room and find that the bed's biochip-driven computer can do far more than anyone expected, as it begins to develop a mind of its own. The film mixes action, comedy, drama and mecha science fiction.