"Tetsuo!"
"Kaneda!"
"Tetsuo!"
"Kaneda!"
You know you're at the right kind of anime convention when if you shout "Tetsuo!" at least one person will shout back "Kaneda!" at you.
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Akira is considered to be one of the seminal anime movies. It is a movie that anyone who likes anime should watch just so that they can say they have watched it. Not everyone likes the movie, and I can understand his or her viewpoint, if you read the original manga (not the new small one that's taken from the movie and has colour pictures that are definitely just cells from the movie) it doesn't quite stand up under the glare of something spectacular. You could have made a six episode or more OVA out of the manga easily, and I would love it if someone did. However, that's the manga and I'm here to review the movie itself.
The movie is possibly one of the best-known animes and is available in most stores that stock films. You can often find it in places that don't normally stock anime and as such it has become a classic, it is often the first anime movie people watch.
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Sometime in 1988 a mysterious explosion destroyed a large portion of Tokyo and World War III happened. Thirty-Eight years later in this post apocalyptic future we find Neo-Tokyo, a city fraught with urban decay. The police and the military have a hard job to try and stop all the gangs and terrorists that are running rampant around the city.
Kaneda is the leader of a bike gang, of whom all members are his friends; a lot of them have known each other since nursery school. The gang is having a clash with a rival gang called 'The Clowns' and during the chases and the fights Tetsuo, Kaneda's friend, ends up in an accident involving a strange child named Takeshi.
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A man who is shot by the military as he tried to take him to safety had kidnapped Takeshi. Anyway, Takeshi manages to survive the collision without any harm but Tetsuo was not so lucky and when the military come to pick up the child they take Tetsuo with them. It seems that he's been taken in to be a Government 'lab rat', we see him develop at an alarming rate into a being that can use and infinite energy. Using his new found powers Tetsuo manages to escape, and the army must do all they can to stop him, otherwise the whole of Neo Tokyo could explode...
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Meanwhile Kaneda has been arrested and whilst he and his friends are being detained he meets a girl named Kei. He saves her from the police and discovers that Kei is part of a resistance group that know something about a military project named 'Akira'. They also know a little something about where Tetsuo has been taken so he tries to stay with the group in order to find his friend.
The story may seem a little weak at times and can be confusing but after a few watches it becomes a lot easier to understand. Many of the characters can seem a little one-dimensional but this is countered by the fact that none of them have a set role; you cannot easily pick out a hero type. After all, the main group you are 'cheering' for throughout the movie are a bunch of teenage delinquents.
On the DVD the feature film has been digitally remastered, and this makes it an essential buy to anyone who is a fan of the VHS. It also has the advantage of having the Japanese language version, a must for many of us anime fans. The animation is nice and sharp, without being overly so and it's very well done for something as old as this, of course the remastering has helped a little. There are some things I noticed on this, which I didn't notice with the VHS because the screen was too blurry. For example it's much clearer when Kaneda spits out his tooth after he was punched. The sound quality is also much improved, and some of the scripting has been changed but they've kept the music as it was originally. Probably a very good thing, since the score is excellent and superbly fitting for the film.
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The film also has new voice acting, nearly everyone is younger, you no longer have Kei sounding as old as Faye Valentine (Cowboy Bebop) or Suzuka (Outlaw Star) though I haven't checked to see if she's still being voiced by Wendee Lee, and I think that it's much better this way. Tetsuo and Kaneda are only meant to be 15, but they sound quite a bit older on the VHS. The chubby child in the Akira project used to have sort of an old gangster voice, think Marlon Brando, and now it's been replaced with a small child voice. Although the gangster voice did sound cool I think this might be better, maybe, I'm not quite sure yet. You'd have to listen to both and make up your own mind as to which you prefer.
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9.5/10
| Additional info |
| Movie length | : | 124 minutes |
| Studio(s) | : | Toho, Tokyo Movie Shinsha |
Director | : | Otomo Katsuhiro |
| Animation | : | Nakamura Takashi |
| Script | : | Hashimoto Izo, Otomo Katsuhiro |
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