Review of Akira (1988) by A L — 02 May 2012

Where It All Began for Many, Many [i]Otaku[/i].

When I was a child, there was a commercial for what was basically the anime-of-the-month-club, which welcomed you into (if I remember correctly) "the fascinating world of Japanimation." (As we called it in those days.) This was prominently displayed in it, because it had just come out and was blowing people's mind, man. When I was in college, I discovered the phenomenon of the anime music video. The best of these, so far as I'm concerned, is a brilliant version of Van Halen's "Right Now," which exactly followed the structure of the original version and complained about that idiot who considers himself an anime expert because he's seen this and a couple of episodes of [i]Dragonball Z[/i]. (These days, I believe you would insert [i]Naruto[/i] into that sentence instead.) Because everyone--everyone--with even a little interest in anime has seen this movie. It's one of the symptoms and has been for more than twenty years.

Explaining the plot, however, gets a bit complicated, and not merely because the manga on which it is based is over two [i]thousand[/i] pages long, meaning the story skips a lot of detail. Briefly, though, Tokyo was destroyed thirty-odd years before our story begins. The year is now 2019, and our characters are members of one of the biker gangs of Neo-Tokyo. (Biker gangs of Tokyo are actually a thing.) The gang is led by Shôtarô Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata). For years now, he has been best friends with Tetsuo Shima (Nozomu Sasaki), who is envious of much of Kaneda's life, including the really spectacular motorcycle he drives. One day, they are fighting against a rival gang, the Clowns, and Tetsuo gets into an accident. And develops telekinetic powers, like you do. He seems to be possessed by the spirit of a boy named Akira, whose powers are what destroyed the original Tokyo. There is a lot of complicated political intrigue, and Tetsuo is going crazy.

When people say negative things about this movie, they usually start by talking about the violence. In my opinion, it is a much better starting place to talk about the limited amount of sense it actually makes. One of the reasons I'm skipping over the politics is that I myself don't entirely understand what's going on there. A man named Colonel Shikishima (Tarô Ishida) controls the military around Neo-Tokyo, but I was never clear on the structure he was a member of. He seemed to answer directly to Parliament, and when he stages a coup to ensure that the Akira threat is dealt with as he feels it ought to be, there does not seem to be anyone in the military who outranks him. There's a great deal of talk about tax reforms which have essentially destroyed the Japanese economy, and I assume the detail is explored in the manga--I mean, with over two thousand pages, you'd hope so--but I didn't really get it here. Or even think it was entirely necessary.

But no--violence. Which is odd, because I really don't think [i]Akira[/i] is all that violent. The violence is a little hallucinogenic, which means it has a . . . well. I hesitate to use the word "visceral," because part of the issue is that a character is basically killed by being crushed by someone's organs, but it is also the right word. The point is, the feel of the violence in [i]Akira[/i] is not like the feel of the violence in, say, a Michael Bay movie. There are explosions here, but there are not merely explosions, and the explosions are the least of everyone's problems. There isn't even quite as much highly pressurized blood as you get in a lot of violent anime, where people get papercuts and have blood spurt twenty feet. But because the violence is so unreal so much of the time, it has a bigger effect. It's also true that the gang warfare isn't exactly [i]West Side Story[/i], either. I mean, these guys are swinging blades at one another from motorcycles, and that isn't going to end well for anyone.

I don't know what it is about [i]Akira[/i] that has given it the place it has in anime history. It certainly isn't the best anime that I've ever seen. In fact, the last time I saw it was with the Giant Robot Appreciation Society, which is the anime club at The Evergreen State College, and we got horribly distracted by comparing the cult of Akira (within the movie) to the more vocal of our fellow students. Certainly they're equally laughable quite a lot of the time. The plot is convoluted, and I haven't even gotten into the "kindergarten." It is, of course, visually striking, comparable to [i]Blade Runner[/i]. And, of course, for many people, it was simply the first anime they'd ever seen. That same AMV that I mentioned earlier grouses about how Disney delays their Studio Ghibli releases, which is certainly true. However, the thing about the distribution deal between Ghibli and Disney is that Ghibli [i]gets[/i] American distribution. Hardly any other anime does, making [i]Akira[/i] practically unique just for that.