A quest to create and control a life-preserving potion provides the ambitious adventure plot for this steam-punk alternative history of a world deprived of scientific progress for decades.

The animation is styled on the work of the French graphic novelist Jacques Tardi, whose own ligne-claire drawing was inherited from Hergé. It teasingly reimagines 1941 Paris into a distorted familiarity (including two Eiffel Towers) and populates it with ingenious steam-driven devices – while following young scientist-pioneer April’s hectic world-saving mission.