Air Date: July 16, 1988

Genres: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

Type: Movie

Studio: Tokyo Movie Shinsha

Age Rating: Pg-13

Rating: 7.5/10

/Summary

Japan, 1988. An explosion caused by a young boy called Akira with psychic powers tears through the city of Tokyo and ignites the fuse that leads to World War III. In order to prevent any further destruction, he is captured and taken into custody. Now, in the year 2019, a restored version of the city known as Neo-Tokyo—an area rife with gang violence and terrorism against the current government—stands in its place. Here, Kaneda leads "the Capsules," a group of misfits known for riding large, custom motorcycles and being in constant conflict with their rivals "the Clowns."

During one of these battles, Kanada's best friend Tetsuo Shima is caught up in an accident with one of the experiments who finds himself in the streets of Tokyo after escaping confinement from a government institution. Through this encounter, Tetsuo awakens to the power of Akira. Blah blah blah I compiled most of this off Mal.

/Review

Akira is probably one of the most well known anime films ever. Everyone pretty much knows it or have at least seen some kinda reference to it. It's a remarkable movie and deserves the praise it gets. The animation is fucking amazing and crazy to thing it was done by hand. I recommend 'The Making of Akira’ for more details on production. You'll gain even more appreciation for it. The style and design for Akira is one of my favorites from any cyberpunk type work.

Now that I got that out of the way, the plot's alright. A lot of my criticism for it comes from the cuts they did from the manga. So stuff like them not explaining the experimentation much is done in the manga. They did have to squeeze down a crazy amount of content into about 2 hours of film. Which for what it became, did turn out well enough. But they have to cut down so much shit it's insane. Most of Tetsuo's and Kanada's backstory isn't present. The most we get is like a 2 minute long flashback of their meeting at the orphanage. Kei's whole thing is non present along with most of the student resistance shit. Entire plotlines are gone, like the Miyako one. Which for it being very important in the manga it's insane that they cut it down to like 3-4 scenes. As I said before most of these critiques are non-existent in the manga. So read it

The first dub is notoriously bad. It's been memed on from the existence of the internet. I like it in a its so shitty it's good way. I really like shitty ass dubs, it adds to the experience for me. But yeah it's bad. The translation they did for it isn't terrible but definitely dubious at points. The second dub is alright. It's amazing compared to the first one. The sub is actually really good. For the best voice acting you should go with that when you watch.

Uhhhhhhh idk how to end this soooo. TL;DR its good but anime < manga