Akira (1988)

Akira (1988)

 4/10

Starring the voices of

Mitsuo Iwata

Nozomu Sasaki

Mami Koyama

Taro Ishida

 

Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

 

How this is regarded as one of the best animated sci-fi movies ever is beyond me. I say that with all the needed respect to those who rate it as so and I am being literal when I say this is beyond my understanding why anyone will say so.

The pacing was not so great, not a huge fan of the animated and there were parts in the movie where they just dragged on and on about something that, when it finally happened it was anticlimactic to see.

Akira is 1988 Japanese animated post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action film that has become a sort after pop culture and regarded as one of those animes you have to just see. I want to greatly disagree with that. It is not that I did not enjoy the action in the last act of the movie, because I did. I was taken by the way everyone transcends thing, but before all that led to this were boring discussions and sparks of actions here and there.

Akira takes place in the year 2019 at a time when corruption, anti-government protests, terrorism and gang violence was at its peak. This future we are witnessing is a rebuilt Tokyo called Neo-Tokyo. All this takes place after Tokyo was destroyed by an event which we are told later as we watch.

We are focused on a vigilante bike gang which is lead by a kid named Kaneda. We also meet one of his friend Tetsuo who seems smaller and is shelved when the bike gang go rampaging.

Tetsuo always wanting to prove himself stole a bike and was being chased by rival gang, when he had an accident as he almost collided with an odd-looking child. That child had escaped from a secret government facility.

The accident awakened Tetsuo’s psychic powers and he was captured, by the same facility which the child he almost hit ran into was from. It is from there that Tetsuo’s psychic power grew and he bust out of the facility with only one focus in mind, to find something named Akira and show Kaneda and the rest of the biker crew how strong he is now.

The idea of a future with people having telekinetic powers for me has many angles which this can be spun. Then this animated movie focus of when such powers is given to someone who is not mentally able to handle such responsibility is very capturing. Challenge I felt this could have been implemented better.

If you are done with seeing Akira, you will enjoy the way the medium uses dream sequences to show different perspective of things. The cross between reality and what isn’t and the challenge of having to prove oneself as self sufficient when the need to be is not needed. Other than that, you will be wondering why anyone would ask you to see this.

I can advise that if you want to see this, note this animation is not for children.