AKIRA Full Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Amon


AKIRA is widely considered the definitive classic of anime. Based on the acclaimed manga series by Katsuhiro Otomo, it was the highest-budget anime film ever produced at the time and one of the first of the "modern" anime films to be released in the US, and even as it approaches two decades old it is still a technical tour de force. Its well-realized cyberpunk setting, dark, layered plot, and disturbing vision of power run amok make it far more than just a visual spectacle--it's clear why it has grabbed the guts, eyes, and imagination of two generations of anime fans. It just has one problem: A heck of a lot of comic book full of involved political and metaphysical plot make for a heck of a confusing two-hour film.

I'll address my complaint first. The manga version consists of six thick volumes densely packed with political scheming, religious conspiracy, revolution, shadowy organizations, secretive scientific projects of vast scale, the mystery of the incredible power of Akira, and a couple of kids caught up in the middle of it--one with newfound and uncontrolled powers and the other just trying to make sense of it all. The manga, in fact, wasn't even finished when the movie was produced.

When you try to pack all of that into a single film, you get an incredible tangle of information, characters, and sociopolitical interplay. You also get a very confusing movie. This substance overload appeals to some, and those who've read the comic probably don't have much trouble deciphering what's going on. As for me, at least as an unprepared viewer, I felt more lost than anything, like I was walking into the story halfway through. This works wonders for empathizing with the two teenaged protagonists, who are just as clueless and confused about everything that's going on, but it leaves the rest of it feeling like excess baggage.

There are dramatic scenes that I'm sure are supposed to be very significant, but with characters who barely even show up before their "big moment" I didn't know why I was supposed to care, let alone feel any connection to the apparently momentous events. Likewise, the truly wild apocalyptic overtones of the film are pretty hard to get a grasp on, and I can't say that they really make that much sense if you haven't read the comics.

In essence, AKIRA is the sort of film that gets better if you watch it several times, so you can start to pick out some of the plot threads hinted at. Better yet, read the manga first so you're already prepared for it and can just sit back and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride it is. Even putting aside the eye candy, the roller coaster of a story is full of hard-hitting action and all that convoluted plot can be just as much an asset as a hinderance if you look at it right. At the center are a couple of down-to-earth, relatively believable punk kids who give you something to hold on to during the tempest.

Tetsuo is the most interesting of it--an everyday angry kid gifted with psychic powers of truly frightening scale and as tortured by them as he is hollowly empowered. His torment, god complex, and desperate breakdown give an emotional center to events that are otherwise drastically out of human scale.

That scale is, perhaps more than anything, what makes AKIRA so memorable; there are many tales of psychics and power run amok, but few if any that so viscerally portray out-of-control power. Tetsuo's experiences are like the twisted reality of a fever hallucination given form, yet at the same time frighteningly concrete and, eventually, of apocalyptic scale. There are disturbing scenes and images that, love them or hate them, will be burned into your mind well after the film ends.

Otomo obviously has a fascination with a specific sort of uncontrolled power; variations of it are featured prominently in AKIRA, Roujin Z, The Order to Stop Construction, and even to a degree the climax of Metropolis. This idea of a "monster" that grows organically, uncontrollably, and unstoppably, subsuming everything around it, at least for me, taps into something fundamentally frightening in the human subconscious--it is exactly the sort of nightmare image that terrified me as a child. In most of his films, the creature going wild isn't even malicious in its intent, but the image of a sort of "macro scale virus"--growing out of control and becoming one with its surroundings in an effort to survive--is a powerful one.

There are also images of out of control power of an entirely different sort--snapshot scenes of social unrest that look like something right off the nightly news. These capture the eye and the mind for an entirely different reason, since they are exactly the sort of torrent that any of us might one day find ourselves caught up in.

As for the visuals, there's little that needs to be said; truly an animated masterpiece, AKIRA is full, theatrical-quality, Disney-grade animation portraying a dark cyberpunk future, brutal violence of the most realistic sort, and eventually a crescendo of nightmarish supernatural power. The backgrounds are dense and exquisitely detailed, the animation uniformly fluid, and the action razor-sharp and brutally concrete. I have only one complaint: The character deigns are faithful to Otomo's originals, which means that nearly all the teenagers look the same, regardless of sex. I exaggerate slightly, but portraying variety among the young isn't his strong point.

The music deserves special note; a unique and powerful mix of traditional Japanese themes and pounding industrial beats, it in and of itself is something of an experimental masterpiece. Some scenes are backed with guttural vocalizing and driving percussion, others with an airy chorus, Buddhist chanting, or even Noh drama, all woven together into something mesmerizing. A soundtrack unlike any other.

I don't have much to say about the acting, other than to note that there are now two English dubbed versions; Streamline's original, that accompanied their US release in the early '90s, and a Geneon dub to go with their remastered restoration, based on a more accurate translation.

In all, AKIRA may feature a plot that is weird, only partially explained, rather confusing, and not for everyone, but the nightmarish, apocalyptic visions will be hard to take your eyes off of, and I'm not exaggerating when I say the lush visuals are the rule by which all other anime is measured. AKIRA is such a classic, and so visually striking, that any anime fan should see it at least once, and many will want to watch it again and again to more fully appreciate the density of the plot.
Related Recommendations

It doesn't get any better than this for spectacular animation, but another good-looking (and similarly confusing) movie with a weird plot and lots of powerful, destructive psychics is X: The Movie. Angel Cop also has something of a similar psychics run amok theme, but is otherwise very different in theme. You might also be interested in Roujin Z, a completely different but oddly similar movie by AKIRA's creator, as well as "The Order to Stop Production," one of the shorts that make up Neo Tokyo, also by Otomo.