Akira (1988)

User Review

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  TheMovieDiorama

  9 / 10

  Akira is arguably the most influential anime classic of all time. Garnering a title such as that automatically inserts high expectations upon everyone. Well, from what I just witnessed, it pretty much floored me. Two school drop outs, Kaneda and Tetsuo, discover that the government are creating weaponised telekinetic humans where the latter becomes experimented on himself. It soon comes into motion that they've unleashed a power of cataclysmic proportions that cannot be stopped. Thirty years since its release, three decades since it took the world by storm and popularised anime in western culture. It is, without a doubt, an incredibly entertaining cyberpunk showstopper. For director Otomo to perfectly balance the political agendas of anarchy, capitalism and revolutions with existential themes of religion and creationism, is pure genius. To blend these ancient and modern ideologies and amalgamate them to populate a futuristic dystopian environment, again, is pure genius. Not only does he stop there. Intricately adding exhilarating action sequences bolstered by characters teeming with excitable personalities to create what I can simply describe as anime's greatest blockbuster. Wow. It hasn't aged at all. The animation is gorgeous, Neo-Tokyo looked awe-inspiring and the inventive imagery was stunning. Tetsuo's nightmarish fantasies surprisingly stunned me, the ominous images of giant toys have mentally scarred me. The visceral violence, the excessive use of gore and the usage of profanity enhances the overall edginess. Way ahead of its time, that's for sure. Yet beneath the visual splendour lies a melancholic story of a friendship being tarnished by corruption. You feel for both Tetsuo and Kaneda, two central characters that are exquisitely developed. The third act involving Akira did escalate to absurd levels of craziness, which detracted from the realism of the story. Also some of the scene transitions were abruptly cut. However, very small nitpicks. Akira may not be the best anime feature film I've seen, but it certainly has justified its status as the most influential.

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