Akira - 30th Anniversary
AKIRA - TOHO
Thirty years ago on December 25th, 1989 in North American theaters, an animated Japanese film premiered. Akira was produced by the Japanese company Toho and distributed in USA by Streamline entertainment, not only carrying the weight of justifying the hefty budget that made it the most expensive Japanese animated film of its time but to also showing an ideologically opposite hemisphere a different and somewhat alienating style of animation that was presented in its most raw and unaltered form.
Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and adapted from his own manga of the same name, Akira is always one of the first movies brought up when discussing anime's status as art. That feat is well earned because, alongside its contemporary brother Grave of the Fireflies, this film proved to an unexpecting audience of a neon-loving decade that animation could be more than just something one leaves on in the background for their kids to watch while parents are busy. So many years after its release, especially in the year that the film takes place in, the charm of Akira has never dispersed — boiling down to two of its aspects: detail and accessibility.
AKIRA - TOHO
When talking about detail, it is important to say that any regular moviegoer might not notice the revolutionary type of animation utilised in Katsuhiro Otomo's film. That viewer can be forgiven because, in reality, the animation is nothing but 24 fps of hand-drawn sets of paintings that move in fluid conjunction throughout.
This is a feat that even modern anime movies and series sometimes fail to achieve, as they unwillingly create incoherence within their animation style that takes the viewer out of their experience. It makes it even more impressive when this ancient anime film transports from a slow talk between friends in a bar to a high speed bike chase mixed with pipe combat while showing the personality of its two main leads with such smoothness that even live-action movies in subsequent years started taking note.
AKIRA - TOHO
It is essential to understand that Akira is as influential as a science fiction film as it is an animated one. Where Blade Runner was a much more intimate in its storytelling and worldbuilding, trying to reach the inner emotional conflicts of its characters and showcasing one's desires in a world gone dark, Akira showcases its world with a much more comprehensive and political outlook. It doesn’t showcase the personal psychological conflict of its characters as much as it shows the different attempts by different characters to bring some sanity to a world which grows madder and madder by each passing second.
It is not to say that Akira does not have its influences; Otomo was heavily inspired by the 1979 Andrei Trakovsky film Stalker while creating the story for his manga and the film, something that is evident from his nod to the famous glass grabbing scene and some shots of explicit vagueness. Nevertheless, it is still able to create a uniqueness for itself by not drowning but learning from its influence and create a style of dystopia similar to that of Blade Runner.
As previously mentioned, the second reason for its legacy is its accessibility, with the help of an evergreen animation style, solid score by Tsutomu Ōhashi (commonly known as Shoji Yamashiroa), and a presentation that equally entertains and goes deep into the emotions of even the most casual of viewers. Akira represents everything that anime and science fiction are capable of achieving. That might be the reason that this film keeps on appearing on everybody's must-watch list. It is nostalgic yet contemporary feeling, it is fast-paced yet divinely deep, it is colourful yet depressingly bleak, and its elements are that of fantasy yet are showcased with a sense of reality. All of which combines to make a piece of commercial art that is accessible to any taste or age. It is safe to say that silence and wonder will be the two reactions one carries hours — if not days — after the credits roll or even when one hears the iconic line of "I AM TETSUO!"