Of the thousands of anime movies out there, chances are that most people have only heard of a few of the more highly publicized releases. Movies such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ninja Scroll, and Akira are among the more widely known. The topic of this review however, is the latter film. I can remember seeing a lot of publicizing for Akira, which wasn't too common for anime at the time. The film looked stylish and cool nonetheless, but it went ignored by me for years and years. It wasn't until a summer or two ago that I was given the opportunity to view this movie. To be honest, it was hard to get into in the beginning (I could relate with pretty much none of the plot material), but after getting a feel for Akira, I haven't stopped singing it's praises since. Why should you have an open mind, and check out this movie even if you aren't a fan of anime?
Title: Akira
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Year: 1988
I have to admit that before I watched it I was a bit skeptical that the movie would be hard on the eyes on a distracting level. Thankfully, Akira starts off in a flashy enough sort of way with bright city lights, busy streets, motorbikes, the works. Akira's beauty has withstanded the test of age, and I'm sure that most people who give it a chance won't be turned away from "inferior" animation. A few scenes nearly made my jaw drop, to be honest.
Keep in mind, if you were looking for a movie that spoonfeeds and holds your hand throughout it's duration, than you should probably look elsewhere than Akira. The film features many interweaved character specific stories, and though they don't all come together in a nice little bow-tied package like you'd hope for, they're still fun to follow. There are no pinpointed protagonists in the storyline, which makes for a very diverse group of characters. You'll want to identify with one, but the plot draws itself out so that you won't be able to make your mind up about any of the characters for very long. I left this film with a great sense of pity in my mind, it's really haunting.
If you're not a fan of anything the slightest bit disturbing, than once again you should probably turn your back on Akira. This movie features an array of stuff to blow your mind, but most of it is drawn out through Tetsuo going insane. You'll see everything from his guts spilling out from his chest on the sidewalk, to a stuffed teddy bear, toy rabbit, and car marching jollily along in this character's imagination. Keep in mind, I haven't even mentioned the sheer violence featured in this movie yet, and Akira features it's fair share of people being torn up by bullets, and other much more gruesome deaths that I cannot explain without giving away some of the key plot details.
The movie begins in Tokyo, the year is 1989. What we see is a giant explosion, engulfing Tokyo. There's no explanation for this yet, but it will be told later on in the movie. Now the film shows off Neo-Tokyo, which was built after the gigantic explosion witnessed in the beginning. This new city is overrun with biker gangs, greedy politicians, and anti-government activists that have taken up arms against local authority. From here we have one particular young biker gang who is doing battle with another, their enemies are the notorious group known as the "clowns". When the police show up, the battle breaks up a little, with everyone scattering to get away. Everyone except for a young biker named Tetsuo, who is determined to chase down one of the clowns. From here, Tetsuo crashes his bike into what looks like a young boy. Despite what it may look like, the boy is unharmed and somehow managed to block the bike invisibly.
From here, the injured Tetsuo is grabbed by a hospital. Unbeknownst to anyone, he's actually been brought to a medical research facility. His friends get worried when authorities won't tell them in which hospital Tetsuo is being held in. Back in the research facility, he has no idea what's being done to him. After analyzing him, scientists realize that he has incredible powers already tucked inside of him. This only makes them more bent on experimenting with him making him release the power of Akira. All the while the research team worries of the possibility of Tetsuo escaping with these special powers, and thus they are given the command to execute him if such a chance for him to escape into the city arises. They don't quite realize fully the damage that they are about to do to Tokyo.
One of the biggest running themes is the relationship between Tetsuo and the leader of the biker gang, Kaneda. The leader is always there to save Tetsuo when he's in trouble, and as such, Tetsuo has become a little bitter about his inability to fend for himself, thus leading to some friction between the two characters. This exact theme of rivalry is very common in a lot of anime, but none that I've seen have managed to flesh it out on the level of Akira. Tetsuo is a confused and bitter character, and the crazy stuff that happens to him after getting experimented on certainly does not help his character to be a friendly guy. Akira makes Tetsuo out to be quite literally, insane and emotionally unstable. You'll want to sympathize with him, you really will, but the events in Akira make this a pretty much impossible feat.
Constantly through this film you'll experience some of Tetsuo's insanity. I personally don't know what it's like to trip on acid, but I'd imagine that the feeling was captured perfectly in Akira. As I mentioned earlier in this review, at one point you'll have a giant teddy bear and two of his friends seeping milk from their stiching, staring down Tetsuo in a very disturbing manner. Later in the film, while Tetsuo is in a lot of pain from a headache caused by the weird experimentation you'll see him imagining all of his guts pouring from his body on to the sidewalk as he frantically tries to scoop up the exited organs and shove them back in. Of course he's just imagining it all, but it's still quite disturbing as his pain and fear are animated in a very vivid manner, so much that you can almost feel what he's feeling.
Something that really struck me as interesting is the fact that you'll hear the word "akira" spoken tons of times throughout the film, but there is no clear indication of what it actually is until much later on. The neatest occurance of this is when Tetsuo is imagining things, and along with the visuals comes the word spoken by a womanly voice. I found the repetition of the word throughout the film to leave quite the lasting impression in my mind, as you'll even hear non-important characters speaking of it. Keep in mind, there's never a pinpoint accurate, spoonfed definition of what Akira actually is, so you'll have to do your best to put everything together at the end of the film. I actually recommend watching this one twice to pick up more answers.
I found Akira to be quite the visual treat, despite what I was first expecting before I had actually seen it in motion. One of the effects that sticks out particularly well in my mind is the ghost effect given to the lights on the motorbikes in the start of the film. This gave off a very surreal feeling to the battle amongst the two games. One aspect that I didn't particularly like were the character's appearances, namely their faces. This element just seemed a little off, and made some of the characters look as if they had irregularly large foreheads. This is a small hinderance, and the movie's artistic style more than makes up for it. Many of the characters look a little similar also, but this too is very small and easily overlooked.
Before going into this movie, I had heard from multiple sources that the dub into English is terrible for this film. I think these people were slightly exaggerating, as the English voicing isn't half bad. The voice talents do a decent acting job, exerting emotion into all the right places and they're different sounding enough that you can usually tell which character is speaking. With that said, the Japanese dub is better. The voice actors seem to go beyond normal anime movies, with even more emotion than their counterparts. Also, the movie is just more haunting in Japanese voices. Don't feel guilty if you prefer spoken English though, as their isn't a huge difference in quality between the two.
If you're a fan of disturbing cinematics, than this is for you. I also recommend this to anime fans (obviously), and also those who enjoy a good psychological thriller film. Anime fan or not, you've got no excuse for not checking out this wonderful movie.
