Roujin Z

Roujin Z ("Old Man Z") is a 1991 movie written by Katsuhiro Otomo (the writer of Akira) and directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo. Set in the near future, where the number of elderly has started to severely burden the Japanese economy, the Ministry of Public Welfare comes up with an interesting idea: the Z-001, a robotic bed that fulfills all the needs of its residents (monitoring health, providing food, disposing of waste, etc.). A senile old man named Kijuro Takazawa is taken as the first test subject, over the protestations of his volunteer nurse Haruko Mitsuhashi, who feels that Mr. Takazawa needs a human touch that the Z-001 cannot provide. When she breaks into his hospital room in order to free him, she seems to accidentally activate some unknown features of the Z-001: discovering that the machine can move around and change its shape, and later imbuing the Z-001 with the personality of Mr. Takazawa's dead wife. The voice of his wife awakens certain memories in Mr. Takazawa, who remembers when the two of them visited Kamakura, and suddenly he has a desire to visit the beach...


 * Anti-Villain: Mr. Terada is at worst a Well-Intentioned Extremist who truly feels that he is doing the right thing by promoting the Z-001 over human nurses
 * A Boy and His X: An old man and his robotic bed with the personality of his wife.
 * Cool Old Guy: Three of them, all veteran computer hackers who happen to be in the old folks home that Haruko works in
 * Crazy Awesome: By the end of the film, the Z-001 has incorporated into itself
 * Dirty Coward: Maeda
 * Eagle Land: The Pentagon is mentioned as the only possible source of the bio-chips that power the Z-001's computer
 * Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Hasegawa
 * Hello, Nurse!: Haruko
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Mr. Terada legitimately feels the Z-001 will improve the lives of the elderly