Overall Rating
  Awesome: 68.54%
Worth A Look: 13.48%
Average: 14.61%
Pretty Bad: 0%
Total Crap: 3.37%
2 reviews, 77 user ratings
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| Akira (1989) |
by Brian McKay
"14 year old Anime' that's still ahead of its time"
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I'd heard the fanboys raving about this movie for years. You know the kind. The fucking geeks who have a 6 foot tall poster of it that they got on e-bay hanging on the front of their cubicle. I never bothered to rent it, because I figure anything that could inspire this much hardcore geekage is something I need to stay far, FAR away from. It took me years to shake the STAR TREK habit and finally be able to hang out with the cool kids, and by God, I wasn't going back. So what does a buddy of mine drag out at the house party? "Hey everyone, let's watch Akira". Oh great. Geek City, here we come. And then . . . miracle of miracles . . . IT FUCKING ROCKS.The first time I saw this I was high as hell, and a lot of it didn't make sense to me. But the imagery was simply amazing, and still rivaled anything being put out today in the anime' world (it even puts the recent Metropolis to shame, in this reviewer's never-to-be-humble opinion). However, I saw it second time stone cold sober . . . and a lot of it still didn't make any damn sense to me. However, it still stands as an orgy of the ocular senses, and a brain-twisting cyberpunk epic.
The story revolves around a teen asian biker gang in a post-apocalyptic city known as Neo Tokyo (looking vaguely reminiscent of Ridley Scott's vision of L.A. in Blade Runner). They tear-ass around the place in these bad-ass high-tech motorcycles, fighting rival gangs and generally raising hell. One night, they're out prowling the streets and stumble across a little boy who looks like an old man. He's escaped from his keepers, a shadowy government laboratory, and is running around exhibiting some frighteningly powerful psionic abilities. When a member of the bike gang named Tetsuo is injured just before the government people recapture the boy, they take the wounded biker with them as well to be the latest test subject for their experiments. They are attempting to create a super-being with powers that boggle the imagination. The freakish old man/boy is one of their less than successful attempts. Overseeing the project is a brawny caucasian government agent who looks like Jesse "The Governor" Ventura, and two other "old" children. One of them looks like Louie "Are you ready to play THE FUED" Anderson. The other is a little girl who lays around in a floating bed a lot and, with her two male counterparts, has psychic visions. Kind of like what the Kirsten Dunst vampire-girl character would have been like if Spielberg had made "Interview with a Pre-Cog" instead of Minority Report.
When the Tetsuo escapes from the lab where he's been experimented on, he begins to have violent hallucinations and exhibits amazing abilities - able to do things like splatter his enemies against the walls and ceiling with the power of pure thought. As his powers and hallucinations become more pronounced, he begins to undergo a gruesome yet riveting metamorphosis. His best friend Kaneda tries to save Tetsuo, but when his efforts to do so fail, he may be the only one who can stop him.
I'm sure I'm not doing the complexity of the plot any justice. It really is an amazing, if convoluted, mixture of technological and spiritualistic themes. It is doubtless that much is lost in the cross-culture translation between the vision of the Japanese creators and what the Western audience is able to grasp. But what will remain with you the most is how amazingly detailed, vivid, and violent this vision of the future is (and, like all the best anime, it is excruciatingly violent in places).
Drive-In Triple Feature Mind-Blowing Cartoon Picks for Akira:
Okay, I haven't seen a whole lot of anime'. I'm no anime' connoisseur. But I know what I like, and the best two I've seen besides this one are still:
Ghost in the Shell - This tale of a cyborg assassin who ponders whether she is more machine than human was my introduction to the world of anime', and will always hold a soft spot in my hard heart. Plus, it's a damn good movie, even with the substandard english overdub.
Ninja Scroll - Ultra-violent and sexy, this stylish and sure-fire swordsman's saga is still THE definitive shiznit. Accept no Substitutions! "You can't be hard ALL OVER your body . . . can you?"While it didn't impress me enough to go scrounging for my six foot tall poster on e-bay, it will definitely bring me back for repeated viewings. Maybe the plot will make more sense to me next time, but with imagery this vivid and stunning, who really gives a shit if it doesn't? I could watch it in the native Japanese language track, and it would be no less compelling.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com:443/review.php?movie=1928&reviewer=258
originally posted: 09/29/02 09:47:00
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Brisbane Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Brisbane Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
02-Feb-1989 (NR)
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Feb-1989 (M)
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