There are good parts about it, like the art and animation, which is gorgeous. Although you can tell from the style that this is an older anime, it does not feel outdated, and if it was for the art alone it would be a 10. I liked the last 20-ish minutes and how there was a payoff. I liked the atmosphere of Neo Tokyo and it would have been interesting to explore more.
Everything else is.. not very good. If Akira had been a TV show instead of a film, perhaps more of its themes could be explored in depth(although this risks sacrificing the quality of the animation). The story is vague- I understood that basically there are people with a lot of energy(?) and they caused World War Three and created an apocalypse and the government decides to exploit children who have this power but lo and behold, it backfires on them. There's a lot of violence but no meaning to it, which reminds me of shounen anime rather than a seinen anime. The pacing is not very good either- there will be action upon action and suddenly a character will go into exposition or a half-baked philosophical rant. I also did not like how Tetsuo's powers were undefined- one day he's just some loser, the next he suddenly becomes OP and nobody can defeat him because he conveniently has all the powers in the world.
I respect Akira for being such an influential film but I don't think it's anything awe-inspiring, and from this film I wouldn't be motivated to read the manga either.
