Akira guest movie review

by Chris   ⋅   August 13, 2005   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

This guest review is the first from my friend Alex Candia, who actually submitted the link for the earlier Kikkoman article. A linguistic major and fellow Japanophile, give it up for Alex!

Old School and oh so great. Set in the shadow of a huge bomb crater and a giant Olympic stadium, Neo-Tokyo is a city that has gone bad. The aristocracy is losing power to the military, students are rioting and trying to set off a social revolution, and crazy biker gangs cause all sorts of mayhem.

The story of Akira is set off by a crash between a military test subject, and a member of a bike gang. Tetsuo (the bike gang member involved in the crash) is granted supernatural powers, to which the military begins poking and prodding his brain to find out how. The story goes back in time to explain the Akira mystery, while also shedding light on Tetsuo’s past.

However, there are many parallel stories within the plot, and it’s a treat to see how the characters end up interacting in the end. Sometimes the dialogue can go on for a long time, but the reward of listening is a better film experience all around.

This film is very dark, and is known as a revolutionary work by Director Katsuhiro Otomo (recent work includes Steamboy and the script for Metropolis), that not only proved itself as a great anime, but also as an important film to history, blending themes of Christianity with those of the atomic blasts that devastated Japan during WWII.

– Alex Candia

As an added bonus, Alex sent us the following picture of a real life Kaneda:

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