Katsuhiro Otomo’s classic animated film is returning to UK cinemas to mark Manga Entertainment’s 25th anniversary.
We take a look back…
For anime, 1988 was an extraordinary year.
Rival motorcycle gangs fight in the streets.
Revolutionaries and religious fanatics clash with the police.
There, Tetsuo acquires god-like powers that threaten to tear Tokyo apart.
The result remains one of the most technically astounding animated features ever to emerge from Japan.
Look, too, at how Otomo and his animators use color in this sequence and elsewhere.
Its something many modern filmmakers could learn from.
Akirais unusual, in that it features none of the exotically-hair-colored ladies or outlandish mecha commonly associated with anime.
Theres a moment where a prisoners beaten senseless by a group of cops.
His face leaves behind it a streak of crimson and black blood on the floor.
The cute, shambling toys in Tetsuos bedroom hallucination are replaced by huge and terrifying giants.
A terrorist attack is scored with a piece of jolly ragtime music.
Akirais the work of an artist who loves and understands cinema.
But beneath all this technical brilliance, brutality, political intrigue and violence, theres a human story.
The police beat inmates to a pulp.
Scientists experiment on children without remorse.
Politicians and military leaders clash in a futile grab for control.
Adults are portrayed as grasping, cruel, incompetent, or all three.
Tetsuo, meanwhile, is cursed by power.
A more imminent presence in the original manga, Akira is the Harry Lime of Otomos movie.
Akirais a meandering, perhaps even baffling film, full of digressions and shifts in perspective.
Other characters from the manga are either conflated, reduced to cameos or dropped entirely.
And what music and imagery there is.
Twenty-five years on, andAkirastill has the power to enthral and mesmerise.
And maybe thats just as well.
Nothing else looked likeAkirain 1988 and even today, that still holds true.
Akirareturns to UK cinemas on the 21st September.
it’s possible for you to see a full list of cinemas atManga UKs website.
