Akira (1987) * * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Quite possibly the best animated film ever made. A feast for, as well as an attack on, the senses and the intellect.
Words don't convey the total and monolithic impact that AKIRA has on the average viewer. With praise to Roger Ebert for the use of the term, it's an out-of-body experience in the best possible way. It may also be the best animated film yet produced.
On the factual level, AKIRA is an animated film that has been adapted from a best-selling Japanese comic, or manga, by Otomo Katsuhiro. Otomo's comic ran for several thousand pages and has been reprinted in several phonebook-sized volumes, in both English and Japanese. With some condensation and sweat, it has been rewritten (by Otomo and others) to fit into a slightly-over-two-hour-long movie. The adaptation has worked in the vein of all the best film adaptations: it stands apart from the original and succeeds on its own merits.
AKIRA takes place in a Tokyo some decades into the future, after a holocaust of some kind devastated the city. Wiping the map clean and rebuilding anew has not helped anything: the city is a den of crime and foulness, with kids running amuck on motorcycles and riots erupting periodically on streetcorners. During a rumble, one of the gangs runs into a bizarre little character -- a boy with the face and body of a wizened old man, and with an expression of perpetual terror -- who is promptly whisked away by the military. In the ensuing scuffle, one of the kids -- the "runt of the litter", Tetsuo -- is injured and carted off. Kaneda, the gang leader and Tetsuo's lifelong confidant, tries to piece together what's going on. He finds a lot, which I am loathe to reveal here to avoid ruining the film's many astonishing detours.
The film's dense plotting makes a second or even third viewing more or less mandatory. Like BLADE RUNNER or NATURAL BORN KILLERS, the sensory overload is so absolute the first time, it's almost impossible to take the story directly: there's paranormal powers, government conspiracies, uprisings, youth in revolt, and a titanic climax that takes place in a half-finished Olympic stadium. It's almost too much, but on the other hand, *not* telling a story like this with total sensory overload would have been criminal, and the animation in the movie is technically unparalleled at showing us, in synapse-snapping detail, the violent parameters of the world Kaneda and his buddies are stuck in.
AKIRA is violent, and it's tempting to make obvious comparisons to Hong Kong action movies, but it doesn't have the exhilarating and intimate orchestration of a John Woo film. It works on a different level -- it's armageddon. And it's also strong enough in its own right -- in the way it deploys and tells its story -- that comparing it to an HK flick would be redundant. What's also startling is how direct and visceral it is: five minutes in, we're not responding to the movie as a bunch of painted cels. We're inside it; it's an environment. Many people, myself included, find themselves remembering some of the most striking moments not as animation but as a kind of hyper-reality.
The fact that the movie is animated and not live action is a critical one. TriStar at one point optioned the film and considered a live-action remake, but that betrayed the whole point: the project would have cost an unspeakable amount of money, and would not have had the same effect in some ways. Animation is about showing us things that are made all the more graphically theatrical by BEING animation. We're invited to let our own imagination fuse with the imagination of the creators; it's more demanding and in some ways more rewarding. As animation, the film is magical. As live action, it would have been concrete and therefore ridiculous.
A lot of people have complained that AKIRA's biggest flaw is its thin (or even inept) characterization. There's a case for that: the general, for instance, is not required to do much more than grind his teeth and snarl, and many of the supporting characters aren't given a lot to do. But the details of Kaneda and Tetsuo's relationship are brought out excellently, in both obvious and subtle ways -- and since this is the true heart of the movie, it does a good job of carrying the rest of the movie's sometimes heavy weight. What the movie does best of all is present an experience. The last hour and a half of the movie are something like riding a motorcycle at top speed along the crumbling rim of a volcano, staring down all the while, feeling closer to the abyss than just about any other movie has been able to bring us.
Watching AKIRA is fast becoming something akin to a rite of passage in some circles -- an initiation into what the future might recognize as truly classic from this era. A list of such things might include STAR WARS, BLADE RUNNER, and maybe TITANIC. I'd submit AKIRA for that list as well, without blinking.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei [new email address coming soon] ICQ: 934998 http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... NEW WEB SITE: http://cablehouse.dyn.ml.org ...and the mandate of heaven you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth
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