As much as Japan has been connected to animation over the years, and despite the vastly differing amounts of diversity and content that medium is given when compared to the West, that’s not to say that Japan has a peerless record on the subject. Indeed, the Land of the Rising Sun can be just as bull-headed and destructive to the creative process as any other country in the industry. Whether it’s putting the animators on a shoestring budget, thus reducing the animation quality (you’ve probably seen enough slideshow animes to know what I mean), or just outright refusing to give people credit for their work, the fact is that artistic integrity doesn’t matter half as much as getting the product on the shelves. It makes a certain degree of sense, when you’ve got a dedicated demographic that doesn’t mind shelling out 50 bucks a pop for a blu-ray, then you probably want to put out as many blu-rays as you can. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t good shows and movies being putting out, but it does mean dealing with a mountain of shovelware, and that this dedication to immediacy can hurt even a good show.
Still, establishing a legacy through animation is entirely possible. Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is probably the most famous example, at least when it comes to Western audiences. Shinichiro Watanabe, creator of Cowboy Bebop (the one anime everyone can agree is good), Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy. And, as you might expect from this article, mangaka and filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo. Although his work in the field seems limited (around half of his work in film seems to be focused on screenwriting), that observation doesn’t seem to matter much when his feature-length directorial debut was 1988’s Akira, based on his 1984 manga of the same name. Akira, a movie that, like Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”, inspired legions of imitators and very few peers.. Akira, a film that managed to carve itself out a spot in Western pop culture in an era when people still called it japanimation and Dragonball Z was still a dot on the horizon. Akira, the film that took the bar set by Cronenberg and Carpenter and raised it as far as it could reach.
Akira, it’s a movie.
The year is 2019. 31 years ago, Tokyo was almost completely obliterated in a massive explosion. Upon its ashes Neo-Tokyo was built, yet this new city failed to live up to the reputation of the original. Rampant crime and drug abuse, crippling poverty and severe economic depression, daily protests that threaten to erupt into terrorist attacks or military oppression. Could this be it? Is this how the world ends, with civilization slowly rotting and decaying until it finally collapses in upon itself? At the very least, Japan seems destined to end with a whimper rather than a bang.
For teenagers Kaneda and Tetsuo, worrying about how shitty the future is going to be doesn’t matter as much as living in the now. They and the other members of their gang spend their days popping pills, trying to get laid, riding around on their motorcycles and beating the hell out of other gangs. School? Finding a job? Fuck that mess man, why bother contributing to a broken system? Biker punks for life bro!
Or so it would seem, until one night a mysterious boy who looks like an elderly man appears and somehow causes Tetsuo to crash his bike. Before Kaneda and his friends can get help, the military arrives and takes not only the boy, but Tetsuo as well. Who is this mysterious boy? Who is the mysterious girl that seems to be connected to the boy? Why does the military need this boy and Tetsuo? Kaneda is going to find out, but the answer might not be something anyone wants to hear. Because Akira, the ultimate energy, is getting ready to awaken once again. And when he does, no one is going to be safe.
Leave it to the man with years of experience in sequential art to know how to put a movie together. Akira in motion is a beautiful thing, & Otomo has a gift for crafting scenes manage to stick themselves into your mind. The infamous ‘bike braking’ moment that’s been referenced so many times since, the battle with the military, the climax...hell, every time someone shoots a gun it ends up looking amazing. I dunno, it’s the fluidity of those action that’s most appealing I guess. The smoothness of it. It feels more natural, as if you’re seeing something real rather than animated. One of those you have to experience to understand.
It’s also not a film that shies away from uncomfortable scenes. Lots of blood, lots of scenes where people get blown away with bullets (and a couple that are pretty much pulped) and of course the end of the film where things upgrade to full-on body horror. Of course this isn’t quite like The Fly or Tetsuo the Iron Man, where we as the audience are forced to watch a man decay in front of our eyes. It’s more like standing up after a long period of drinking or substance use and feeling the world drop out from under you. Suddenly the rules don’t exist anymore, and reality itself descends into utter chaos. Rather similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey in that respect, although I’d say Akira might take the points in the pure bizarre. Which is probably what keeps it from being a truly scary movie, unless you have a low tolerance for things like this. You spend less time being scared and more time watching to see what weird crap they come up with next.
If you’re a gorehound, an animation fan or if you’re interested in getting into the anime scene, this is just one of those movies you need under your belt. English dub, original Japanese, Neutral Spanish dub, whatever you want to use, it’s (probably) all good. The West may not respect the field of animation as much of animation as much as we could, but we should at least love the gems that we got.
One more left.
One more left.
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