Ranked #339

Akira

Note: The following review DOESN'T contain spoilers.

Akira is a very controversial piece of art — but a piece of art regardless. It isn't easy to watch it, and it isn't easy to review it, either: Akira the movie is such an ambitious and influential project that grasping it in its entirety is far from being trivial.

Story
Akira's story is among those where you need either high intuitive and perceptive abilities to understand everything that goes on, or to watch it several times. It doesn't really help that Katsuhiro Otomo stuffed almost 2000 pages of story into 2 hours of screen time, but at least the movie has considerably good re-watch potential, which might help to release part of the strain.

What we have is a post-WWIII Tokyo of not-too-distant future, led by greedy politicians and torn apart by terrorists trying to bring down the corrupt power and biker gangs that roam the streets. There is no usual hi-tech cyberpunk fantasies about living online, free information or global communication — just a demonstratively dystopic setting involving modern society abandoned to rot on its own. This is driven up further by the secret military experiments in attempts to magnify and control human psychic powers, which actually led to the WWIII in the first place. These social, political and semi-scientific, semi-mystical aspects mix and intertwine as a couple of teenagers get accidentally involved in all this mess.

Art
Where Akira definitely wins is the art department, being a clear milestone in animation. It's been almost 20 years since its release, and I've yet to see many movies, especially anime, drawn with this amount of detail. There are very few still shots, every movement is scrutinized and animated at 24 frames per second, creating a remarkably fluid image. Dialogues are all lip-synched and everything looks as natural as it was possible to do at the time.

Character design can be called dubious, but personally I like it, since it's considerably truthful to actual real-life images, where people actually tend to have noses instead of some weird pointy bumps, and eyes that don't take half the entire face. Most of the characters are pretty much ugly, and it helps them match the gloomy setting really well. The only weak spot in it is considerably small difference in facial design, which is why some characters (especially younger ones) look similar to each other.

Sound and music
Akira is actually rather silent most of the time. However, when the sound plays, it's almost always highly dynamic and spot-on. Most of the soundtrack is dominated by industrial beats, minimalistic ethnic motifs and chants, and is intended to set the certain ambience in the movie, so you'll likely fail to enjoy it too much outside of it. But for what it's worth, the sound work is really good in the movie, especially considering the time of its production.

Characters
I can't say there's too much to it when it comes to characters. The movie's limited length (compared to manga at least) didn't leave too much for character development, so you mostly see more-or-less clear manifestations of certain archetypes rather than complex emotional and psychological twists, even though not all of them are simple to read through. Some appear initially negative but proven to be decent later, while others appear good at first but eventually show themselves to be corrupt.

Pretty much the only characters who let you get some insights into their backstory are Kaneda and Tetsuo, especially the latter. Both are almost equally confused by the events engulfing them (kinda like the viewer, actually), and it's very interesting to track their relationships throughout the movie.

Enjoyment
This is a very subjective matter, but personally, Akira is one of the most enjoyable movies I've ever seen. It has a lot of shock value (assuming you're shocked by immense amounts of graphic violence), it has furious action, it has plot riddles, it has mystery, drama and horror elements, all presented in a coherent (but sometimes overly gruesome) manner. Some people regard Akira to be a gratuitous bloodbath, but there's much more to it than the amount of gore, it's just that those people are unable to look deeper than that. There is a lot of symbolism ingrained underneath the visual layer, and it takes some time and effort to find all the links to cultural and other contexts.

That being said, if you enjoyed watching it for the first time, chances are you will enjoy it the second time around, and probably even more at that. The final 20 minutes literally eat my head from inside every time I rewatch them, much like End of Evangelion or other similar movies. And for this alone I think it deserves its 10.


Overall, I'm still of the opinion that Akira is a masterpiece and deserves watching, whether you like anime (or any form of animation, actually) or not, at least for its great cultural and historic value. There are many movies and cartoons that are far more enjoyable, and it's not like Akira is the absolute limit of anything and everything. But as more and more titles surpass it in various respects, Akira stays like the Colossus of Rhodes, being a great achievement on its own and one of the most influential landmarks in the history of anime for years to come. read more

I've been watching anime for years and I have to say Akira is one of the best pieces of work i have ever came a crossed. The animation and action sequences hold up very well in comparison to some of the animes coming out to date. The pacing is almost perfect and the art and music are simply a work of art you really feel like you're in that world. Classics are classics for a reason and Akira is a classic anime.

Caution there might be a few spoilers contained in this review.

The movie starts off with a large mysterious explosion which destroys Tokyo, the movie then begins 31 years later in Neo Tokyo. Akira for the first 20 minutes or so follows a punk high school bike gang and takes you through a bit of their daily routine so you can build a relationship and relate with their characters. Right off the bat you're introduced to 2 of the main characters in the movie, Tetsuo and kaneda. Kaneda is the leader of the bike gang and is more or less what you would expect from a lead anime character he has a big heart never gives up. As far as Tetsuo goes he is portrayed as a weaker character that is often taken care of by Kaneda. Following a clash with a rival bike gang the tone of the movie changes, as an unknown kid is introduced to the plot the movie switches from punk bike gangs to a more complex story about mysterious abilities, government experiments and cover-ups.The movie uses alot of references about the war and bombing of Hiroshima, if you follow along closely you will see there references used such as when Testua blew up and created that nuclear explosion, well the same area in which that took place is when Hiroshima was bombed from the americans. Although it doesn't have a direct story telling of the bombing, there is references used that point to a post apocalyptic setting and the history of war and military power.

Directly following this Kaneda and the rest of his gang are dragged off to jail while the unknown kid and Tetsuo are taken by the government. The action in Akira is very well paced at no point do you feel overwhelmed with continuous fight scenes or long drawn out scenes of talking either. From art direction to music this movie is a masterpiece especially when you factor in when it was made. It is a very violent and dark movie well in it's right though as the violent and dark overtones are needed to portray the story properly, this is not a Disney movie and to spite the art style is not really a movie for children simply because besides the violence there is no way a child would be able to follow the plot, nor would they be appropriate for a child.

I think it is important to point out that while I enjoyed the movie a lot there are some things that had a few issues with nothing big enough for you not to watch the movie but that should be mentioned non the less to make this review as thorough as possible. The first of which is the story, while it is complex and you get a pretty good understanding of what's going on I felt that it could have delved deeper into the history of Akira and some of the other characters. At times it seemed like they were trying to compress something much larger into a 2 hour and 5 minute movie. How ever, if you read the manga, the original story is far greater. So i really recommend you check out the manga if you want to see how the entire story is portrayed. It is much longer. Its a shame that a movie was cut so short.

Akira is one of the best anime movies I have seen in all my years of watching anime. It is in all respects a classic that should be seen by people interested in or thinking of getting into anime or who's already an anime fan but haven't seen it yet. If you like action or complex stories then you will enjoy Akira, it's a solid mixture of both never giving too much of one and too little of the other and while you probably won't fully understand the story from the movie or relate with some of the characters it's a minor spot on a beautiful work of art. But you should definitely check out the manga as thats the original story and where the movie took place from. The manga is fleshed out alot more and dives deeper into Japanese modern history, the war and the characters.

I hope this review helps clear up the argument or debating on if this movie is a movie worth checking out! In all honestly i can say you probably won't be disappointing! read more