Akira

Often hailed as a classic, I can kind of see where the praises are coming from: this kind of hard hitting, apocolyptic anime always seem to attract acclaim. But personally, I couldn't really get into it that much. Or perhaps it's because I just didn't get it.

My main problem with "Akira" is the vagueness of the story. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of these abstract, philosophical stories to begin with, but "Akira" also suffers from a lack of completeness, which only exacerbated my confusion even more. I was watching it with a friend and he was having to constantly explain what to ... me what was happening using knowledge that he'd accumulated from reading the manga (and in fact he didn't fully understand everything either as he hasn't read all the manga). My own view on this is that an anime like this should be able to stand on its own - I shouldn't have to go digging into the manga just to understand what is going on.

The visuals of "Akira" was supposedly amazing at the time. But if it was, stylistically I don't think it's aged particularly gracefully, though it hasn't done too badly either. Some of the background scenery still looks great, but the characters designs have an odd, "wobbly" kind of feel to them.

Even though I didn't find the music particularly to my taste, I appreciate the fact that it tries to do something different. The chant heavy soundtrack used had a primitive and alien feel to it. In the context of the anime, it worked quite well in a weird way and didn't sound out of place. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the voices, which sounded rather horrific on the dub, with the sub sounding a little but not much better.

Other than Tetsuo's character, which was quite well done, I found the rest of the character to be a little wooden, which probably affected my enjoyment of this anime a bit. And as you probably will have guessed by now, I'm not too impressed regarding the grand, complicated plot underneath that's nigh on impossible to follow unless you've read the manga.

If you like those philosophical kind of anime, you'll probably enjoy "Akira". I can't deny that it's an interesting watch, but for me, that's about as far as it goes.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

First off the story is taken from a well developed manga.. A six epic manga style story that can actually be considered an ominbus but still just a really big manga. xD

Start out with cool biker gang and leader on cool bike. But wait a minute .... who's that other biker gang coming to harass them. Just some random gang for action?! Important to the plot? Why heck no. Not in this movie. In fact, this biker gang that for some reason choose to dress like the Jokers from Batman Beyond come in and mess with our heroes and are never seen from again.

However in ... all this a strange boy walks out into the street. And he appears old. Real old. Heck maybe it will be explained later. Seems important to the plot to have a kid, who is like fifty walk out onto the middle of the street. And there are cops surrounding the kid. Uh oh, story is picking up. Ain't it.

Tetsowo (whatever) crashes and Kanda and the rest of his gang go to jail or back to school pen for juvenile delinquents while Tetsowo goes to a hospital.

Kanada sees a pretty girl .... that looks like a boy and springs her and his friends out of jail or wherever they were, by causing a riot. Pretty clever our hero. He tries to hit on her but she will have none of it. In fact, it turns out she works for some kind of resistance. A resistance, oh boy where is this going?

So to sum up, we have an old looking kid that the government is interested in. A rebellious biker gang, two in fact and one has a cool looking bike the other dresses up like clowns. and A resistance! 0.0 A resistance a against what? It's so secret not even the audience knows. I think they want to bring down the government. From how this movie played out you'll never know it.

But Kanada's got that nice tough guy image who won't rat out this do nothing resistance, so they let him go.

Meanwhile Tetsowo leaves the hospital. He just walks out. But not before the army just ran some test on him to see if he was psychic? Why they do that? Just because?

Well Tetsowo goes to see his old girlfriend but a couple of nameless bad@$$ street punks see him and because he's weak and a punk, he gets his butt whooped and she almost gets raped. Thank goodness, Kanada is there in just the nick of time.

Oh yeah, Tetsowo is doing drugs because his guts just open up and spill out onto the sidewalk. As he realize it's all an illusion. The army comes and takes the druged Tetsowo away leaving behind his friends, important to the plot, they die by Tetsowo hands er mind ... gee I hope I didn't let loose any spoilers making it Kanada's job to go out and kill him.

So now Tetsowo is in another hospital and freaky stuff starts happening to him. More drugs, yes! but more old kids!! Is the cause of these weird events, and not drugs. Drugs given to him by the military of Japan to keep his powers in check, so it's okay that he's doing drugs. Oh did I mention that one of the old kids is the kid he crashed into 0.0 This kid who ran away at the beginning now seems content to live at the army base. WHY?? Maybe that old little psychic girl decided to give him some. She seems quite chummy with that fat old kid psychic one. I think he ran away because he wasn't feeling the love in the group. It's up to your imagination of why he ran away in the first place and got hit by Tetsowo.

Meanwhile the leader of this army and a scientist is going over the data about Akira and how Tetsowo matches. They comment on how strong Tetsowo should be compared to Akira. All in the present tense. Mind you. Which will become important and will seem very odd later on.

The leader of the army wants to know whats the best way to control Tetsowo for the good of Japan. And there's a few bits of him talking to show you that he isn't out for power but rather to protect japan.

Back at the hospital, Tetsowo has gotten rough with the three old kids and through this shake down of old child-like little people, he learns that he has psychic powers. And again he walks out of the hospital but this time he kills a number of people just because he can.

Uh oh he is enjoying it.

He goes back to the bar and kills everybody. Including his former biker gang. Wait! I forgot to mention the bar at the beginning. No wait, the bar was only seen for about a minute and it didn't have Kanada or Tetsowo in it, just random people who where going to die 30 mins later in it. Yep, I was right to leave it out.

Completely not important to the plot. Like a lot of things in this movie.

side note: The biker gang at the beginning is the clown biker gang. We finally find that out. Now that the story is almost complete.

From the shake down, Tetsowo learns about Akira. I forget either from the old kids or the army leader he learns about this guy named Akira and he sets out to free him. Of course, a bunch tanks get in the way. No problem for the newly powerful Tetsowo. The army doesn't want him to awaken Akira, but he's going to do it anyway. He's such a bad boy. ;)

After tearing up half the city, Tetsowo finally gets to Akira, only to learn that he's dead. Wait what?!

So the army built a vault and sent tanks and missiles after Tetsowo to keep him from waking up .... a dead kid. A brain in a jar no less.

Okay at this point, I'm really pissed off.

Kanada hot boy looking girlfriend gets possed by this guru and she talks about a bacteria with the power of a human to help explain Tetsowo to the audience and to a revengeful Kanada.

Not only does this boy looking girl gets posed but she also through her contacts with this useless resistance is able to get Kanada a laser rifle.

It's laser time kiddies.
Kanada tries to avenge his fallen comrades with laser action and the Army leader tries to shoot Tetsowo with a laser cannon orbiting in space. Wait? Why didn't he do that at the beginning when those tanks weren't working ... oh well, who cares.

Well both attempts fail and Tetsowo gets more powerful but wait, what's this .... He's turning into a monster. A monster that's eating up all of Tokyo! And he's now crying out for Kanada to save him.

but wait what's this those three old kids have come out of nowhere to save the day.

Kanada gets sucked into the monster and the three old kids go into it to rescue him.

inside the monster known as Tetsowo there is a montage of his early childhood of being bullied and about the kids, who got old and never grew up. At least physically.

the end.

I have watched this thing five times. Everybody loves this movie. I keep on watching it thinking, maybe this time I will see the thing everybody else sees or I will finally understand something i didn't see before. I just keep saying to myself why did I waste my 90 minutes on this crap. In reality, the only thing I found is that people invent something that isn't there. I did agree with one person's interpretation of the movie but I still didn't like. It just fails on sooo many levels story wise.

OK... I'm sure you can tell by the scores I gave this anime that I found this anime to be RIDICULOUSLY overrated. I've watched it maybe 5-7 times in my life. First time was just to watch what all the fuss was about, 2 through the last was "maybe I missed the reason why people thought this was so great." the very last time I saw it, I remember saying "Nope, I was right. Still weak."

When people say "arguably the greatest film of all time", I'll be first in line to be on the arguing side. The two main characters of the story are both ... whiney and lame. The ending was creepy and gross, and if this anime weren't drawn so damn beautifully then I would bet lots of money that it would lose a substantial portion of its fanbase.
It was the very first full length anime movie I ever saw. I was in my early teens, and luckily for whoever enjoys reading my reviews I was born with that "there's gotta be better than this" kinda curiosity and gave other animes a chance. Next film was Ninja Scroll, much better, much more entertaining.
So yeah, Akira... summed up in a gesture... I give it an apathetic shoulder shrug any day of the week.

Contrary to many opinions, this movie is quite bad. Firstly, the whole background story about Akira itself is never explained, which causes alot of confusion during the movie. Then there is the static characters which just drag down the plot line, because you have no idea why or how they are connected to it. The movie itself contains very little action until towards the end, but even then it gives little satisfaction. In many ways this is like dragon ball but on a much lower scale then even that. So, if you are looking for a good movie with psychological stuff in it, seek elsewhere, ... because this movie is just flat-out boring.

As much of a "classic" or "must-watch" anime as this may be, its only strengths are the same as a generic explosion film. There isn't a story to this anime, at least not one that I could follow. It appears to have a rebellion type plot with some sci-fi mixed in, but I couldn't pinpoint where the beginning, middle, and end were. This is "adapted" from a highly acclaimed manga and was even directed by the mangaka himself so the poor adaptation may be due how little time it had to adapt what was released of the manga at the time.
The action scenes are done ... well and the colour palette is impressive seeing as what was available at the time the movie was made. Unfortunately all of the characters look similar and in a fast paced movie it can be hard to know what characters are in a scene without other characters referring to them by name. Since the movie is action based the characters don't address each other too often so you may watch through an entire scene without even knowing which characters were in it.
The sound effects were done well and sound quite realistic when they need to be. The music also sets the tone of the scenes well. The voice actors do a much better job than the character designer and the characters do sound different. Their voices also sound good in general and make the movie come alive more than anything else does. If you have a good knowledge of seiyuu you should be able to tell the characters apart by voices.
In addition to not being drawn differently, the characters also don't differ too much in their personalities. The antagonist was completely forgettable, the protagonists form a group consciousness which makes it hard to follow which character did what, and the female characters look and act so similar to the male characters that it can be hard to even know that they're female to begin with. One character they designed differently from the rest was some sort of alien, but he also has a female counterpart who is indistinguishable from what he would look like in drag.
I personally couldn't find anything to enjoy about this anime. The battles were nice, but if that's all you're there for then the sad attempt at trying to give the movie some sort of plot could just be classified as filler. The story feels like a dementia anime but lacks the satisfaction of understanding it almost like a maze with an entrance and no exit.
There isn't much to this anime at all. The sound is good and the sakuga is nice to look at, but from a storytelling standpoint there isn't anything of any value.

I gave this movie a 6, and here's why. You'll enjoy this movie very much if you're some kind of deep hipster art major or a dumb ass with a philosophy major. This movie is very visually pleasing and I say that not knowing what other sh*tty movies looked like in the 80's. Bottom line, it looks good. Now lets talk about the story, and I won't spoil the "story" if that's what you want to call it. This movie will brain f*ck you like a lab rat trying to understand the meaning of life, or like a twelve year old trying to understand Right-Wing ... politics, it doesn't work. If you're like me, you stumbled on this sh*tty movie thinking it'll be like a nice "Dragon Ball" anime with a nice plot and plenty of action that makes sense, but no, all you get is a waste of two hours and then another hour wasted searching on multiple websites like reddit and yahoo answers to find the meaning of the movie because it left you confused and with a disgusting head ache. Even when you search for a meaning, multiple hipsters that tried to answer the question "what does the 1988 anime film Akira mean?" you're going to get a bunch of different answers because everyone who acts like they know what it means just interpreted themselves and then go as far as calling it a piece of art. I'm going to end this on the note of saying that if you want to get brain f*cked and have no idea what you got into, then go ahead, watch it. Just don't go thinking it'll be about motorcycles and futuristic weapons, because it's not. You're better off wondering why Vince Vaughn still acts and ruins or films like how this movie will ruin your life.

Well, Akira, anyone who has watched anime knows Akira, you may not know what it's about but everyone has heard the name. Akira is definitely the most and possibly most talked about anime there is. But is Akira good is the true question, is it good, the answer sadly is no.

Story 3/10: Okay, read these lines out loud "KANEDA! TETSUO! *RATATAT!* *BOOM!**GRAHALGRAHAL!!*" congratulations, you have just recited the whole plot of Akira that you will be able to understand. Yes there's more then just that but it makes absolutely no sense. You will always here from people "read the manga" but that's the problem, ... you shouldn't have to read the manga to understand the plot of the anime, that be like saying you have to read the comics to understand the plot of The Dark Knight.

Art 10/10: This is Akira's true saving grace, it's ungodly good animation. Most anime features stiff characters that stand perfectly still for a majority of the time with nothing but their mouths moving into only a single position so it looks like the only thing they're saying is "ah ah ah ah ah" and it still somehow manages to look choppy. Akira on the other hand has constant movements from characters who actually move in a somewhat more relaxed and realistic manner, and they even have slight movements with dialogue and lip syncing, LIP SYNCING! And on top of it that animation is so smooth you will be in awe, I don't know how many frames per second Akira has but you will never find any anime that moves this smoothly (and this movie was made in 1988)

Sound 5/10: First on music, the music in Akira was fine, nothing wrong with it what so ever, but it's forgettable. Most people will never remember a single song from Akira or feel compelled to listen to it again. Now as for the voice acting, first a little info, there are two dubs, one made back in 1989 (streamline) and another in 2001 (pioneer,) and there is constant debate among the Akira fanbase as to which one is good and bad, the truth is they're both bad. The streamline has the right emotions displayed and the actors can actually scream in pain and such when the script calls for it, but the characters in Akira are a bunch of 15-18 year old punks while the cast sound like they're all 40 year old greasers from the 50's, while the other dub had more suitable voices but the acting was half-assed, so you have a choice between bad acting or distracting out of place voices (I haven't seen the sub so I can't really talk about that)

Character 6/10: The characters are kind of a love hate thing with me. For one I liked the major characters personalities, Tetsuo's punk "kiss my ass" nature (later turned psychotic power hungry mega being badass,) Kaneda's cocky, fun-loving, "I just don't give a fuck" attitude, and most of the bikers. Most of the other characters though were just horrible, from that resistance fighter with the mustache (pick which one) to the girl who looks like she's Kaneda's clone. Which raises the other issue, the character designs, every character looks like every other character from that group, Kaneda looks like Tetsuo with combed hair, the girl Kaneda meets looks so much like him he's practically moving around with a mirror, all the resistance fighter guys have trench coats and pencil mustaches and there's no way to tell any of them apart.

Enjoyment 6/10: Okay, Akira had a confusing as all hell plot and lacking character designs, but still the animation is wonderful and that does help make the action scene brain melting. You will enjoy the hell out of the biker gang fights, the shootouts, the mutation scene near the end, and even some of the dialogue because of the movements and lip syncing (LIP SYNCING! The lips actually move to accommodation the word being said!!! I still can't get over this!) is enjoyable. So yes although a lot of the time you're just gonna be saying "get on with it!" there will be many enjoyable moments.

Overall 6/10: Akira is essentially the Citizen Kane of anime, what could possibly be called the single most important movie in anime, and it has truly set the bar from animation quality (a bar that no other anime has come anywhere close to.) But ultimately this film is the most over-rated anime there is, yet it's one of the most important to anime, I'd say watch it just so you can say you have (maybe you might enjoy it if you did read the manga, who knows.)

The year is 2019. It’s been 31 years since a mysterious explosion happened in Japan, which somehow triggered World War 3. In the current society, a version of the city has been restored, and dubbed Neo-Tokyo, not to be confused with Tokyo-3. But as it turns out, what was supposed to be a new haven for humanity has already become dilapidated and worn down, with the new government at odds with the people, sparking violently destructive protests that are in no way helped by the scourge of anarchistic youths waging war with each other one the backs of their motorcycles. See, ... this is why we can’t have nice things. Two of these gangs are called the Capsules, a handful of middleschoolers with the image of a pill emblazoned on their jackets, and the clowns, a gang of... Other thugs... Who wear weird masks and stuff. Existing somewhere between The Sharks vs. The Jets and The Bloods vs. The Crips, their rivalry is a notoriously violent one, and their fights have terrorized an already restless population.

In any case, it’s during one of these particular skirmishes that the Capsule Corps, led by the main character-ish young man named Kaneda, stumble upon a strange little Benjamin Button boy who inflicts another member, Tetsuo, with some sort of abnormality. The local government snatches up Tetsuo and the little geezer, and they disappear them to a secret facility to perform experiments on them. In order to rescue Tetsuo, Kaneda must work his way into a rebel faction in order to infiltrate the facility... But strange things are happening to Tetsuo, within whom a dangerous entity has begun to awaken, granting him power beyond his control... Power that attracts the interest of Button and his friends, who antagonize him in order to bring about his full potential. When Kaneda finally does manage to reach Tetsuo, what kind of reunion will await the two of them? Can Tetsuo be saved from the destiny that’s begun to develop around him, or is it too late for anybody to be saved?

Akira was animated by TMS, also known as Tokyo Movie Shinsa, one of the oldest known Japanese animation studios. They’ve produced not only anime over the five decades that they’ve been in operation, but plenty of western animation from their subsidiary company Telecom. I’ve seen a bunch of Telecom’s titles, with a particular highlight being the fucking Ducktales(Ooo-Wooo-Ooo), but out of their local work, i’m honestly not that familiar with them. They’ve produced some iconic titles that have been around for impossibly long periods of time, like Lupin(the only installment of which that I’ve seen was The woman Named Fujiko Mine) and Detective Conan, which I only saw the first season. Beyond that, any title they’ve released is either something I saw very little of, or something I haven’t seen in over a decade, so it’s kind of hard to get an accurate grasp on them in regard to their oeuvre of work.

Whatever they’re like, they clearly had a ton of money to burn when they were producing Akira, and boy does it show. The animation in this movie is insanely fluid, especially for a title that was released in the late eighties. The quality is consistent throughout, but it only takes a few minutes to see that this isn’t your average production. Just as we’re dumped into the interior of a seedy, suspicious bar, we’re shown that not even such an arguably unnecessary visual as channels being changed on a TV is still given the kind of lavish treatment that would suggest that they really spared no expense with this one. To be sure, the movie then quickly moves on to one of it’s biggest highlights, the motorcycle race war... Yes, a literal race war... Between the Capsules and the Clowns, which may be one of the single most well-animated sequences in anime history. It’s several solid minutes of gritty dudes racing through town on their various models of bikes as they try to kill one another,r to varying and somewhat vague levels of success. This sequence is so fast and fluid that even the residual trails of their taillights in the night sky is beautifully present.

It’s weird looking back and thinking that an anime from 1988 could look as good as this one does, but it was just as weird for the world back then, as Akira was immensely groundbreaking with it’s visuals. The kind of facial animations and fluid movements it featured were unimaginable at the time, even though they’re more or less commonplace today. Most anime of the time was stiff, with limited articulation and frozen faces with moving mouths, which made this particular piece all the more breathtaking. Now, having said that, it’s kind of understandable, but I just can’t help but feel they might have gone a bit too far overboard with this achievement, as the characters’ facial expressions are so over-exaggerated that it’s kind of hard to take what they’re saying seriously at time, but that’s just a nit-pick on my part.

Akira’s visual prowess doesn’t just limit itself to the fluidity of it’s animation, either. It’s also pretty well directed, with the man in the director’s chair being Katsuhiro Otomo, whom, if you didn’t know, was also the creator of the manga, so in terms of the presentation, nothing was lost in translation. His sense of direction isn’t perfect, as some of his action scenes can stray into a feeling of sensory overload, but there are moments in the government facility and especially in Tetsuo’s room that feel downright chilling with the way they’re framed. The backgrounds of Neo-tokyo are so extensively detailed that it’s almost sad how much of it you’ll miss if you’re not constantly pausing to check out the environment, with it’s variety of different buildings and gorgeous lighting effects. It almost feels like a real city, and one that you could actually imagine living in, thanks to the level of immersion it manages to hit. I’d keep going on this topic alone, but I’m struggling to find the right words to do it justice, and you kind of have to see it for yourself in order to appreciate it.

Although, to be perfectly honest, my favorite thing about Akira is the music, which is uniformly unconventional in it’s orchestrations, and carries a level of depth to it that kind of evades the story itself, as composer Shoji Yamashiro, which is actually the pseudonym of Tsutomu Ohashi, and while further work of his is hard to find, Akira is his most renowned project, and with good reason. The music for Akira is stunningly powerful, full of hard percussions and haunting vocal effects, some of which tell us more about a character and their arc than the story itself does. For example, the most popular track in the movie is probably Tetsuo’s theme, which uses bells and flutes to signify the titular character’s younger-brother relationship to Kaneda, showing frustration in the beginning while slowly becoming more unhinged and unsettling as it builds up to one of the most famous vocal spike notes in anime, the infamous DAAAAAA DAAAAAAA DAAADAAA that heralds the arrival of his powers later in the film.

The rest of the ost is just as creative, however. Kaneda’s theme isn’t as long or involved as Tetsuo’s theme, but the instrumentation is still like nothing I’ve heard before from an anime, as it’s decked out with lightning sound effects and shifting percussive beats that sound like they were taken from a traditional Japanese festival, complete with chants of Rasse-Ra, a chant used to welcome the summer. Other noteworthy tracks include Battle Against Clown, the battle theme for the opening gang war that somehow managed to take the sound of a guy breathing too hard and make it sound epic; Winds Over Neo-Tokyo, a tune that starts out slow and dreamy only to sound more ominous and carnival-y as it goes on; And Dolls’ Polyphony, a damn creepy track that’s used appropriately in the film, as it’s use of a female voice uttering the nonsense word “Perom” over and over again sounds like it was taken right out of a slasher movie, and that’s before the deeper male chanting starts to drown it out. Al;l in all, I highly recommend picking up this soundtrack, whether you’re a fan of the actual movie or not.

To my knowledge, there are two english dubs for this movie... An old one, which was really awkward sounding and badly acted, and a newer one that sounds a lot more natural and human. The drawback is that while the old one at least managed to fit the insane mouth movements from the characters, the newer one doesn’t even try, which in turn makes the over-animation look even more obvious and silly. I don’t really think either dub is that great, but i kind of prefer the older Streamline dub, just because it sounds more interesting, even as terrible as it was. Don’t get me wrong, the Animaze dub had a cast of much more talented and well-respected actors, and they did act out the roles a lot better than their Streamline counterparts did, but like I said, the natural sound and grounded delivery doesn’t really feel like the right fit for the movie’s style of facial animation, whereas the Streamllne one just feels like a better fit for this world.

Not to mention, as talented as the newer acting pool is, it’s not made up of the most compelling actors in the industry. The perfect example of this is Kaneda, the apparent star, who’s played by Johnny Yong Bosch, a highly talented actor who can give stellar, engaging performances when given the right material, but he has way too wide of a comfort zone, and once he’s in it, he falls right into typecasting hell. It’s a shame that he can be so boring at times, but here, he just sounds like a less interesting version of Ichigo. On a similar note, there’s Wendee Lee in the role of Kei, whose performance output is almost fifty/fifty in terms of quality, with just as many awesome roles as terrible ones, and since Kei isn’t that meaty of a character, she falls somewhere in the middle here. Michelle ruff, a personal favorite of mine, is wasted in the role of Kaori. The exception to this trend is Tetsuo, who’s played powerfully by Joshua Seth, a Digimon veteran who plays up his character’s youth and frustration, wearing his torment and rise to power on his sleeve. Either way, I’d still recommend sticking to the sub.

All right, I’m going to try to keep this brief, because I don’t really have all that much to say about Akira. To give this review a little background, I’ve never read the manga this movie was based on. Honestly, I don’t read that much manga in general. My reading is reserved for books, mostly by Stephen King, while I’m passing time on my lunch break at work. Yeah, I’ve gotten into a few series, but I can probably count on one hand the amount of titles I’ve read to completion, or at least to the point of being caught up. I’m sorry, but I’d rather absorb a story visually, where it takes less time and money to do so. Having said that, it means that I was essentially going into Akira blind, and taking it completely at face value, with no source material or outside information to explain it’s story, universe or world view to me. I’m reviewing this movie in a vacuum, as any title SHOULD be reviewed, and I’m not going to do any research to augment or explain the material. A good adaptation should do that for you. So how does Akira hold up under these conditions?

Well, frankly, this movie doesn’t make any fucking sense. From beginning to end, it doesn’t do any more than the bare minimum in explaining anything. To start right at the beginning, we’re told that Japan accidentally bombs itself(I won’t tell you how, as it’s a spoiler), and that this event was the spark that caused World War 3, and that the story takes place several decades after. Okay, so, how did World War 3 start? And yeah, I hear you guys saying “With that explosion,” but that’s not what I mean. How did Japan accidentally bombing itself lead to the third World War? That’s not a small detail. You know what a world War is, right? It’s a war where a group of allied nations fight against the rest of the world. Did Japan blame the explosion on another country? Who were it’s allies? Who were it’s enemies? did it win? did it lose? How long did the war last? how did it end? Did it even end? what was the death toll? You can’t just throw World War 3 into your narrative because it sounds cool, damn it, you have to explain that shit!

Okay, here’s another one: What are people protesting about? What is the government doing that’s got the people so pissed off? What’s the conflict there? Or here, I’ll give you an easier one: Who’s the guy we see leading the Benjamin Button kid through the crowd? Did he help him escape the facility? How? Or instead, I’ll tell you what... How did Tetsuo get his powers? We see him crashing his bike right in front of Button’s face, only to have it blow up between them, hurting neither of them... i mean, sure, Button was probably able to protect himself with a force field, but the explosion happened right in front of Tetsuo, who wasn’t even scratched. Was it contact with Button that triggered his change? Is that a normal side effect of interacting with Button? Can he just do that, or was Tetsuo a special case who just happened to have dormant apocalypse inside him? Was it the experiments at the facility that changed him? Is there some piece of equipment they have that gives people apocalypse tumors? Would all of this crap have been avoided if Tetsuo were released with his friends? Or died when his bike blew up?

I could throw it a bone if it had a cast of memorable characters, but guess what? I have no idea who any of these fuckers are! I want to start by bringing up Kaori, because while she may not be one of the main characters, her role in the film is memorable for all the wrong reasons. She’s Tetsuo’s... Sister? girlfriend? Stalker? I have no idea. She’s barely in the movie, gets maybe five minutes of screen time, and her only big scenes are where she gets her face punched in and her top ripped off by a Clown member, and when she’s gruesomely axed off towards the end of the movie. Her only contributions to the film are suffering, dying, and adding two seconds of nudity to the film’s content rating, and it’s all so undeserved that it’s honestly kind of uncomfortable to watch. She had no reason to be in this movie. She’s not the only female character, but Kei is so underwritten that I’ve heard hardcore fans of the movie just refer to her in passing as ‘the female.’ She’s a terrorist, but why? What’s her connection to the government? What are her motivations?

And it’s a sad state of affairs that I have to say this, but speaking of Kei, who the fuck is Kaneda? Why am I supposed to be rooting for this person? What’s supposed to be so interesting about him? I think he’s the leader of the Capsules, right? And he’s just... Main character material, or something? What does he want with Kei? Does he just happen to spot “ooh, female,” and decide right on the spot that he’s going to get her out of trouble and pork her? Like, half the movie he’s just trying to get laid, and when he’s not trying to guilt her into it, he’s going up against armed adults in her honor. This is coming from an asexual person, mind you, but is a random girl who doesn’t seem interested in you really worth taking a bullet for? I get the whole devotion thing, but when your life is on the line, dude, there are other fish in the sea. You shouldn’t ally yourself with literal violent terrorists over someone until you’ve at least established a relationship with them.

I mean, okay, I tried to assume that he was just sniffing her ass because he thought getting involved with terrorists could help him to get closer to Tetsuo, but he would have been enacting this plan way too early for there to be a believable amount of desperation, and besides, he hounds her about turning herself in, going straight and dating him afterwards. That sounds a little counterproductive, don’t you think? And moving onto his relationship to Tetsuo, I didn’t know what kind of connection they shared until that random exposition dump at the end. Apparently they were orphans together. Up until then, I had no idea if they were friends, brothers... Even lovers could have been possible... or if Kaneda was just super dedicated to his gang members. The most fleshed out character is Tetsuo, but the only thing we get from him is his frustration over his connection to Kaneda. The changes that happen to him over the course of the film are it’s only, yes, only, source of character development. I’m sorry, but you need more than faces and names to have characters.

The only real concession that I can make for Akira is that it has a really well pronounced cool factor. Seeing gang wars waged on the backs of motorcycles against a vaguely post apocalyptic setting is really cool to see, and the movie would probably be better if that were all there were to it, but it gets so involved with it’s muddled, convoluted plot that it’s impossible to know what’s going on without reading the source material or making a ton of assumptions. It’s like this huge, thousand piece puzzle where none of the pieces fit. I didn’t even bring up the other two Benjamin Button kids, as their plans involving Tetsuo are so confusing and inconsistent that I’m hesitant to even call them spoilers. But like I said,. regardless of what it was they’re actually trying to accomplish, their efforts still play into the movie’s cool factor, as they manage to bring us some truly trippy and surreal visuals when they’re using their powers to attack him in his room. It’s not much, but I guess if you’re just watching Akira for spectacle, I can understand the appeal.

Akira is available stateside in a number of different home video releases, most recently from Funimation is a very cheap DVD/bluray combo pack. Other releases are available, such as the limited edition steel case that I’m currently borrowing from a friend. The original manga has also been available in numerous printings, with the most recent being from Kodansha comics back in 2009. Each volume is still relatively cheap, or you could splurge and spend a little more money on the box set. At the very least, I’d recommend grabbing a copy of the soundtrack Cd, which is available from Milan records, and is fairly inexpensive online.

I’m sorry, guys. i know this is one of the most popular anime movies in the medium, but I just can’t get into it. It’s not a terrible movie by any means... The pacing is really good, and it never gets boring. I’m the kind of guy who literally can’t stay awake through a single showing of Empire of corpses, but I’ve never fallen asleep during Akira, which at least speaks to it having some kind of entertainment value. I understand that adapting a phonebook thick manga collection into a two hour movie isn’t an easy feat, but at the same time, I don’t want to have to look up footnotes and plot synopsis just to figure out what the bloody hell I’m watching. The version of the movie I watched had a sort of pop up feature that was designed to give you extra information at random points, but after like twenty minutes, all it had been showing me was a map and some Japanese text translations, and I was relying on THAT to try and be fair. I like movies that challenge me to figure them out, but not like this. For the animation and music alone, it deserves it’s place in anime history, but I guess I’m just not a fan. I give Akira a 5/10.

So I finally watched one of the most talked about hyped up anime films ever. I was a little disappointed. So I'll start off with the things that I liked about Akira. straight off the bat. I liked the animation. the voice acting and the soundtrack. the animation was so good for when it came out. it's even better than some animes that are airing now. The voice acting was incredible. I watched it in sub. and the soundtrack was really really engaging. later on in the movie I liked the action scenes and the story.

however, at the beginning of the movie for the ... first hour, I was incredibly confused throughout portion because nothing was explained properly. it involved a lot of research on my part figuring out who the characters were and what was happening. it seemed very rushed. however, the second half of the movie was really good. it was super engaging and started to unveil the story that it had. it was hard to grip me at the beginning because I didn't have any idea of what was happening. I could have easily just stopped watching because it was too confusing. although I sat through it and I got to admit it's a really good film.

A lot of people say it is a critique on humanity which I understand. anyone can watch this movie differently some people may just see it as a movie and not really understand the critique part. however, the way I interpreted it was that it was a representation on how people act when they get a hint of power. This shows how selfish human nature is and the destruction it can cause. Also, when people start celebrating the person who is bringing about destruction from their power it shows how people without power ( wealth, luck and fame) can be easily influenced and will have a sort of parasocial relationship with them.

I also thought that it showed how one may hunt and hurt people for something but never have enjoyment and will always be disappointed no matter if they get what they were searching for. showing how cruel human nature is. part of me resonated with the espers because they were children who were put under medical torture for years. it shows how people will do anything to understand the world better and knowledge. overall, it was a fun movie to watch but it was stressful at the beginning because nothing is explained and even after the "twist" it was still quite vague. but I also think the reason that it wasn't explained properly and was kept vague was so that the viewers can interpret it however they wanted.

PS. my girlfriend wanted me to bring up that Tetsuo's head was very distracting throughout the film.

I know I'll make a lot of people mad because god forbid someone else have a different opinion. But I was really disappointed by Akira. It's clear that they were trying to squeeze an entire manga series into a 2 hour movie and to me it just doesn't work. Too many things happen too suddenly with little to no build up. Too many ideas going on at once with not enough time to explore them before moving on. The ideas that are there seem great but the movie leaves me frustrated having not explored or explained those ideas enough. I'll give the manga a chance ... but the movie is just ok with a lot of wasted potential.

I've heard nothing but praise for this movie through the years and I know it's very influential, so I decided to check it out expecting to be blown away by a masterpiece... That didn't happen. I don't know if my expectations were just too high but I found it hard to enjoy it.

Its strength is definitely the animation quality. It's very good for the time it was released. And though the art style is not my favorite, there are some really beautiful visuals such as when we see Neo Tokyo for the first time. And the sound design is pretty cool too. I'm sure it ... must have been quite impactful at the time. But those things alone count for nothing if story and characters are lacking. The worldbuilding is very shallow, just like most of the characters. Considering the movie's runtime, that's baffling. You can barely tell Kaneda's gang members apart and they all come across as nothing more than screaming obnoxious teenagers through 90% of the movie. Tetsuo is simply insufferable, there is no way to feel sympathy for him. I only started to sorta care about Kaneda himself close to the end but felt no reason to care about anyone else there. The romance that the movie kinda tries to build up falls completely flat and at no point there's any explanation about what Akira is and why there are people who worship him. Some of the concepts presented, such as the espers are good but once again there's no explanation about them. The whole concept of Kaneda and the rest being bikers is also quite irrelevant to the story.

I really don't mind the action and the gore, I think they were very well done but there needs to be something more. I have a feeling that the manga might be better in explaining those things but the adaptation has to speak for itself. I understand that certain stories benefit from having some of its aspects stay vague but that is not the case with Akira. It's like we're just watching a series of actions without knowing why they are happening.

Overall, I can understand how it might have influenced a lot of other stories in different mediums and I can't tell if I'd have a different experience if I had watched it in the 80s, but for me it was just a very confusing experience.

It looks pretty; that's for sure. Not the expanding mass of human organs: that was pretty gross. But, Akira's reputation as a technical marvel is well-earned. Fluidly-animated action takes place in detailed, Blade Runner-esque cityscapes and ominous military interiors. Everything from the futuristic motorcycles to the giant, sweating teddy bears creates a vision of the future that is captivating, haunting, and surreal. The iconic animation of Kaneda shouting "TETSUO!" consists of 131,354 cels.

This marvelous display of excellence in animation goes on for about two hours. It was adapted from a manga series of six phone books. While watching the film, a particular thought flashed ... through my brain several times: "man, I bet that got a ton of development in the manga." The movie introduces this expansive world with its own tense political atmosphere, but I never knew what those protestors were protesting. I didn't know what that crooked politician was up to. Most of the character development goes to Tetsuo, the angsty psychic boy, while Kaneda never truly feels like that iconic hero he is supposed to be. And Kei: am I supposed to care who she is? The whole plot of the movie feels rushed and lacking that narrative detail I assume was in the phone books.

Should you watch Akira? Sure. Fans of animation will want to see all that hand-drawn, cyberpunk glory, and once again, it does look impressive. But, I don't think the story earns the word "iconic."

The reason I rated this a 4 was because I read the manga before watching the movie and I had high expectations. I LOVED the manga and the film did not do it justice. Characters come in too early, some characters are taken out, some are shown for a few seconds when they have major roles in the manga. I understand the AKIRA manga would be difficult to adapt into a single movie, but I was just disappointed.

Disregarding the manga, I think this movie is beautiful! The detailed animation, great voice acting, and funky soundtrack are all very cool.

I'm sure people who haven’t read the ... manga can enjoy this movie like it’s supposed to be enjoyed but I could not. If you’re reading this review to wonder if you should watch it, I highly recommend reading the manga first because it blows the movie out of the water!

If you don’t care about manga accuracy like I do, go ahead and watch it! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it :)

Otomo is an autistic folk. Just take a look at his obsessively detailed artwork as a mangaka. He's so passionate he took upon himself the task of adapting his baby into something that would enter history and shock audiences all over the world. Needless to say I adore his ethos of breathing life into every frame of this audiovisual masterpiece, in a fashion not only unheard-of in the industry at that point, but also untouched by virtually anyone up until Miyazaki and Koike decided to join the party, mind you, many years later. The man single-handedly brought about and popularized Japanese cyberpunk, inspiring tons of ... people in the process. Also, props to the cel animation, ink coloring, and avant-garde soundtrack. Sadly, in all his enthusiasm Otomo refused to make some sacrifices in order to attain higher quality to his final product. Akira cuts huge chunks of the original story which in turn undermines its potential to impress beyond its presentation. There is a plot, but it's more a vehicle for iconic moments than a commentary on society, corruption, technology, and whatnot, which is exactly what it strives for. It's not a rule of cool, it's serious business, and that tone can't help but constantly clash with all the stupid shit that could easily come out of a parody of its own genre. Such neglecting of competent storytelling while trying to remain poignant ruins my enjoyment even as I try to see it as mere dumb fun.

The animation is really good and still hold up to this day ! I'm not a fan of the art style personally but it's still really good. The voice acting was average and a bit weak sometimes. The soundtrack is ok, but is forgettable. The themes and ideas for the story were interesting but poorly executed. The pacing was weird and the ending confusing. This movie was also a really bad adaptation of the manga and that's why overall it's overrated.

So that's why I think the movie would have been better with a bit more simplify story for the adaption.

When comes to cyberpunk, I always have dificult in analyse things up, because they're too much mixed and non-linear. Not that I don't like non-linearity, but sometimes people make of it an artifice of narrative to make things sound like "complex", even not being. That's is the case of Akira.

The story was a little odd in the very beggening, but after a few scenes it becomes completely awkward to me. I don't like when the plot elements are thrown in my face, but the contrary is not good at all. You can't situate yourself in Akira environment (at least in anime) because it lacks the ... development factor.. The characters are just too strange. I can know what they doing sometimes, but I never know what they are and why they're doing that stuffs. Seriously, it comes a point where you just can't link the points, even trying so hard. And by the end you comes to know that there's no points. Just arbitrary cyberpunk violent events shooted towards you in 24fps.

The animation was gorgeous. Seriously, even by today's standards, that was a great masterpiece. It can be hard for newcomers in anime even process those high-frame scenes and detailed scenarios. The sound was rare focused, but when it appeared it was pretty interesting. Based mostly in percussion, you can see the Originality factor that lacks in almost every anime I've watched.

Last but not least, the characters. Oh boy, here we comes to decepction again. I don't know about the manga (I plan to read soon), but in this movie, the characters are just mediocre. I'm surely not the first one to say that only Tetsuo has some development, because it's the pure truth. Sounds like they're are used only as an attempt of dramatize the empty story that we see on the movie. Instead of telling their motivations, showing some meaningful dialogues like those that are in Ghost in the Shell, etc, we just endup by watch a bunch of thrown characters being utilized for senseless violence exposition and confusing more and more our minds and expectations for the show.

Anyway, it's like a lot of anime I've seen until now. A undeniable well-designed anime, but with a weak story-telling and almost empty characters. I wound't recommend to anyone, except for someone who doesn't want to understand anything and see a lot of violence exposure.

Akira is confusing. although the animation is good, the story is just mediocre. tetsuo is annoying as fuck and the plot with him being OP and his friend trying to stop him cuz he's too fucking OP. I get there's more to it then that such as the subplot with Akira and the other weird alien looking kids.

I may have a bias though because I don''t really like the "old anime style" if you catch my drift. Akira is hard to criticize because the rabid fanbase will kill a man for calling this movie average ore mediocre. simply because it's "a classic." yes, it is ... a classic but that doesn't excuse all criticism.

did I hate this movie? no
did I love this movie? also no

One of the most BORING AF anime I've ever seen.

The art and animation? Great.
The sound and voice acting? Great.
The story and characters? PATHETIC!

Akira is praised for it's high budget animation and cultural significance being one of the first anime to really impress western viewers during 80's anime boom. It really is an artsy movie that is filled with lots of small details literally every scene has characters moving with not a single repeated frame it's incredible how an 80s anime can look this good compared to modern anime.

The story and characters didn't get any attention at all, it's a real mess that I don't ... even know where to begin. For starters there is way too much going on, it's difficult to follow the story when all you see are gangs shooting each other, army men shooting civilians, blood everywhere, loud explosions everywhere. There is also way too many characters involved and none of them get any actual development. One is a group of revolutionists talking about the revival of Akira, the other is a group of bikers who have no idea what is going on and then you have Kaneda and Tetsuo who have their own rivalry in the middle of all of this.

Nothing here makes me care about Kaneda and his gang, they're all a bunch of loud idiots who don't seem to have any goals or purpose whatsoever other than just fight clowns and chase women I guess. I am actually shocked to see many rate this movie so highly it's really one of the most overrated anime out there.

A movie that is now 36 years old as of writing this review, Akira has some good scenes that still hold up to this day. Anything that includes action on bikes is still amazing and holds up very well. However, most of the film felt a little dragged out and lacked the drive to make you want more. Maybe that's because it is 36 years old and just didn't age well or maybe I would have felt the same way if I was able to watch it 30 years go. Regardless, I recommend you watch the film for yourself to make your own opinion.

Akira (1988)

A great film for its time but one that has just aged badly, it doesn't quite match up with the other greats of its generation. Being around the time I played Cyberpunk 2077 I had high hopes pf this being that sort of film, it was but also wasn't.

The story is simple enough to follow with the usual obsession in Japan of it is always children doing these things, never could we have adults doing anything more than a normal job. If adults do the stuff the children do they are always much worse at doing it as you see here.

The art ... is amazing for its time, it just has not aged well. Some things look awesome, I love the style of vehicles, for example, looks so brilliant and unusual.

The sound has been redone on the one I watched giving it the justified depth it needed.

Characters whilst not a huge number kind of don't matter. They exist for the story but I could easily see different characters suddenly dropping in and not changing the story at all.

In the end, it was an epic, maybe back then it was a 10, but now it's an 8. That is kind of a push but then it meets what is needed.