AKIRA

Original Title: アキラ
Romanized: AKIRA
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Years ago, Tokyo was destroyed by an unknown force that sparked WWIII. Now, in the middle of the 21st century, Neo Tokyo has been rebuilt on the ruins of the old city. Ravaged by aimless youths and bike gangs, rife with political intrigue, cults, and the undercurrents of revolution, this new city a sight to behold. Somewhere in the underbelly of the city, a young punk, Tetsuo, runs into a strange boy. The boy is part of a military experiment involving psychics, and a mysterious project known as AKIRA. When Tetsuo begins to manifest psychic powers, along with bizarre hallucinations, he becomes a target of a shadowy government organization dedicated to stopping a repeat of the incident that destroyed the city once--at any cost.

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-08-09

The definitive classic of Japanese animation, and a cyberpunk classic on top of that. AKIRA suffers somewhat from a dense, twisting, metaphysical, and all-around confusing plot compressed from several fat volumes of manga, but for those grabbed by its apocalyptic vision and socio-political layers, it's the sort of film that gets better the more times you watch it (or if you come in already familiar with the comic version). Regardless, AKIRA is a (if not The) visual masterpiece of anime. The art is consistent and very slick, the backgrounds richly detailed, and the animation itself is of near-Disney quality. It is also viscerally violent, and maintains a dark cyberpunk feel that eventually crescendos into a nightmarish scene of power run amok. The visuals in AKIRA are so good that, even if you hate the plot, you'll probably have trouble taking your eyes off the screen (or you should, if you're a fan of any kind of animation). The music is an equally gripping mix of guttural vocalizing, Buddhist chanting, and Noh drama, as well as some modern themes unlike anything else.

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.

US DVD Review

There are two DVD versions available--one with just the movie, and one with an entire separate disc of extras, including literally hundreds of stills, and the feature-length Production Report (a making of video). In either form, the video is a spiffy one--a beautiful, remastered anamorphic widescreen transfer, a sharp Pro Logic Japanese soundtrack, and a new Dolby 5.1 English dub. There's also a neat little feature where you can have a pill pop up on the screen occasionally that will let you pause for a second and see some info about that scene--most of it is translations of graffiti or signs, but there are some informational notes.

More recently, a version of the movie (without the extras disc) was released that includes a full 5.1 Japanese soundtrack, though it's in DTS instead of Dolby.

Content Guide

Very graphic violence accounting for a 16-up rating.

Violence: 4 - Plenty of blood and guts, along with a brief attempted rape.

Nudity: 2 - One brief scene.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - A bit of making out, and the above mentioned sexual harassment.

Language: 2 - Occasional strong language.

Notes and Trivia

AKIRA is based on a comic series by Katsuhiro Otomo of the same name. The comics ran from 1982 to 1990 and are compiled into six volumes, though at around 400 pages each they are roughly twice the size of the average manga collection. It is available in English from Dark Horse, and has been in one form or another for quite some time.

AKIRA was the first release (way back in 1990) by old-time US anime company Streamline Pictures, who also gave it a limited theatrical run. Interestingly, it was also the only movie they ever released a subtitled version of (although they did release parts of the Robotech series in subtitled form at one point).

More recently, Pioneer (now Geneon) bought the rights to the film, and spent a rumored million dollars restoring it for a DVD release. They also produced a more accurate English dub to replace Streamline's.

In 2006, AKIRA was amusingly featured as part of a montage in an Absolut Vodka commercial, "The Absolute, Spot 1" as "The Absolute Anime." The video can currently be found here, at YouTube as well as on the Absolut Vodka Website under downloads, Absolut Brand Campaign Spot 1.

A couple of notes on the title: As most people even passingly familiar with anime or Japan know, Akira is a common given name (Akira Kurosawa, for example). This is worth mentioning because AKIRA (the movie) has become such a fixture in the minds of anime fans that it's easy to forget that titling it "Akira" is roughly equivalent to a movie titled "Bob." Like the films Dave and Carrie, without the connotations it has developed, it wouldn't sound nearly as striking as it does to many people now.

That said, the title is generally written in all capitals in English (though I'm not quite sure if that's "technically" correct or not). I expect this is to correspond to how the title is written in Japanese; it is "spelled out" in phonetic katakana, as if it were a foreign word as opposed to a name, which would be written in Kanji (Chinese characters), or at least hiragana. The all-caps in English makes it look like an acronym for something rather than a name, which is roughly the same effect as writing it in katakana in Japanese.

Availability

Available in the US from Geneon in completely remastered form, in your choice of the basic feature-only "Signature Series" DVD, a 2-disc DVD set that includes a second disc full of extras including the "making of" production report, and a feature-only version with an enhanced DTS 5.1 audio on the Japanese track instead of the 4-channel Dolby one. There is also a bilingual UMD version. This version was previously also available on subtitled and dubbed VHS, now out of print.

Was originally available from Streamline (and was their first release) on dubbed and later subtitled VHS (Streamline's only sub), and bilingual LD.

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