Animation quality, however, is the single point that Akira blew out of the water. The visuals are fantastic even from a modern perspective, though the art style in particular may not be what a new fan is used to.
The story, on the other hand, felt like a slow burn that suddenly hit a gas tank and just exploded everywhere. Some characters were barely introduced, then used for a moment only to be killed off without much ceremony, and others were built up slowly....also to be killed off without much ceremony. Then the main characters...existed? There's a small background dump about them at the very end, but at that point you probably don't care much about it because the plot point has completely shifted and it's no longer relevant.
The movie's namesake itself is basically a red herring, and if I hadn't been watching and hoping to figure out what Akira was, I probably would have been fully bored with the movie before the half-way point.
As a marker in time, Akira is a fantastic reference. You can see clear things that it inspired, you can see how it helped show animation as not just for children, and you can see a visual masterpiece that showed the talent of the artists unaided by mass amounts of computer manipulation. I wouldn't suggest watching it for much more than that though.
