Akira

Year: 1982-1990 (manga), 1988 (anime)

Director, Creator, and Scenario Writer: Katsuhiro Otomo

Studio (Anime): Tokyo Movie Shinsha

More info: Wikipedia (manga) Wikipedia (anime) ANN (manga) ANN (anime)

Manga Review
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Lots of people who've read the Akira manga claim that it's much more complex than the film, that the story is much bigger and more epic in scope, and that it's just generally better than the anime.

They're right. While I don't like applying the word "better" to comparisons of art, the manga is more than the film in just about every conceivable way.

For this review, I'll assume you've seen the Akira film. You don't need to have seen it to read this review, but the movie's such a foundational work within anime fandom that it's silly for me to assume you haven't seen it, and it's very useful to compare the manga to the film.

The first, most important thing to know about Akira is that the manga ran in the young men's manga magazine Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990, while the film was released in 1988.

The movie only covers the first third of the manga's plot. The destructive release of Akira (the boy), far from ending the story as it does in the film, propels the manga's story forward to deal with Tetsuo and Akira building an empire, other characters trying to figure out how to stop them, and the mass of survivors in the middle struggling to live in the wreckage of Neo-Tokyo.

Young Magazine also published the dystopian cyberpunk story Ghost in the Shell, and Akira fits into the same mold. Make no mistake: Akira is primarily a sci-fi action story, filled with chases and explosions. It's rare for more than 20 pages to pass without at least a tense confrontation, and usually a firefight. Its depth derives from occasional quiet character moments and flashes of kindness or brutality. The manga's plot does feel more realistic than the film's; the arrival of the American military makes sense given the apocalyptic events unfolding around Tokyo.

I was most surprised at the much greater subtlety of the characters in the manga. The film suffers from its action genre heritage: there's no time to develop the characters very deeply when there are so many bike chases and psychic face-offs to animate. Purely because of its much greater length, the relationships in the manga grow and mature over time. For example, by the end of the manga, you understand why Kaneda is so grimly committed to killing Tetsuo, while in the film he's awfully quick to turn a laser gun on his former gang mate.

The characters in the manga also differ significantly from their anime incarnations. The manga Kaneda is more of a goofball who's in way over his head. Kei is a determined young woman with strong reasons for her decisions. The Colonel is a Terminator, relentless in his pursuit of Tetsuo and Akira to rectify the mistakes the Colonel made in the past. The esper children feel like a community of very special people.

More importantly, the characters actually have something to do in the manga. The film leaps from set piece to set piece and crisis to crisis so quickly that the characters spend the vast majority of their time reacting. In the manga, characters plan and talk. They get at least a few minutes to think.

This also provides Otomo with more space to establish a basic moral framework. The film feels like random people reacting to random events, and in which almost everyone dies anyway. The manga shows us moments of desire and struggle. A delaying tactic here actually allows innocent people to escape death. One person's determination pays off in the end.

Akira's dialogue always shone at differentiating characters, and Otomo is just as adept in the manga. Kaneda and Tetsuo's speeches are filled with off-hand swearing, the Colonel speaks with military precision, and Kei maintains an ordinary street patter.

Otomo uses panels with a deftness and confidence that frankly blew me away. I normally avoid using terms like "the author showed confidence in this act," as it's such a vague and un-verifiable phrase, but it expresses my impression perfectly. When the situation calls for a bold layout, Otomo creates one. Otherwise, he uses layouts judiciously, sequencing panels with just the right rhythm for each scene. This is critical for an action story, as there's so much information to parse about character positioning and intent.

Otomo intensifies the action with an almost obsessive amount of detail. You will rarely find a panel that lacks a completely realized background. While the character designs are about as detailed as that of any other manga work, all those backgrounds add a level of weight and realism that firmly grounds the characters in a real world with real consequences. This is not a fantasy series where characters are routinely thrown dozens of feet, then stand up with barely a cough (well, except for Tetsuo and Akira). When buildings crumble, people die. Everyone here (well, again, except for Tetsuo and Akira) is extremely mortal.

As such, Akira feels real in a way that most other manga does not. This is not a criticism of other manga, but I think it explains why Akira attracted such a large following in the West. The average Westerner will struggle far more with the fluid realities of Please Save My Earth, Phoenix, or Rurouni Kenshin. Many works of manga aren't even trying to feel real in this way.

As with so many works, I can't recommend Akira to everyone. It's a dark, bloody story in which a lot of bad things happen. But its story ultimately centers on survival and a struggle to do the right thing, even if it's not always rewarded. And that's a story I'll get behind. With a laser gun.

The 6-volume omnibus release of Akira is widely available at retailers like Amazon and RightStuf.

Anime Analysis
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Akira's characters are surprisingly childish. The focal characters--Kaneda, Tetsuo, and the rest of their gang--don't think about the future, and the few characters who do are trying to prevent it. Most of the characters focus exclusively on the "here and now."

Given Asian philosophy towards "living in the moment," this is pregnant with irony. Here we see the other side of that coin: sticking one's head in the sand.

As a movie made in the late 1980's, near the peak of the Japanese bubble economy, this no doubt resonated with both young adults who grew up with that Me Generation attitude, and the older adults suspicious of it (increasingly so, as signs grew of the bubble bursting).

So, Akira's characters live in a hyper-commercial future, where fantastic motorcycles are available to average teenagers and violence fills the night streets. It's both a thrilling setting and an allegory for its time.

Ultimately, the story centers on the consequences of an empty, violence-filled life. When Tetsuo is taken by the government, his parents don't care; just his gang. And even then, Kaneda's the only one who pushes them to investigate. Tetsuo goes insane with power precisely because he has no higher moral values. He's always operated by taking whatever he can get, so why not continue?

Everyone thought it was funny when he broke a rival gang's arm or busted in an enemy's head, so now that his power is increased by 100-fold, why not increase the violence by the same ratio?

What is it about?
Testuo and his gang of high school-age street thugs randomly stumble on a child being pursued by authorities. The child awakens psychic powers in Tetsuo.

The gang shrugs this off, but Tetsuo's changed. He's already been established as the most emotionally volatile of the group (perhaps this made him most sensitive to the child's contact), and he grows increasingly distracted. He begins to hallucinate. The child has given him strange psychic powers.

He then begins to use and abuse these powers, killing at first in self-defense, then for convenience.

Tetsuo moves through two broad stages of emotional reaction:  fright followed by a power trip. Again, very childish.

Oddly, it's one of the other gang members, Kaneda, who takes it upon himself to first rescue Tetsuo, then stop him. This develops into a wild arms race, where even a shoulder-mounted laser cannon isn't enough to stop Tetsuo, who by this point has gone so far as to prance around in a red cape (probably referencing Golden Bat or Superman), and sits on a throne. Here we see the perils of leadership: Kaneda was the pseudo-leader of the gang, which explains his feeling of responsibility. But he was the one pushing them towards future-less, pleasure-filled, moment-by-moment thinking. In a sense, he's partly responsible for making Kaneda the amoral being he becomes.

Unfortunately, the movie's ending collapses. The titular character Akira returns, Christ-like, to solve all these problems. Tetsuo overloads and explodes in an orgy of flesh and energy, killing untold millions in the process. He apparently forms a new universe. The final line of the film is Tetsuo's new universe-body whispering the words, "I am Tetsuo."

Um, yes you are. How nice for you. If only we didn't need a deus ex machina to arrive there, and if only that had occurred as a result of your actions. And if only the audience didn't thoroughly hate you by the end of the movie. Why, exactly, should we care that you are now your own universe?

Provocative moments
When I think of Akira, one of the first images that leaps to my mind is the final, grotesque transformation sequence, as Tetsuo's body expands into a monstrous carnival of oversized organs, engulfing bystanders. At least one character is crushed to death by his expanding body. It's disgusting and shocking, and an excellent metaphor for Tetsuo himself--always grasping for more, not caring for who gets crushed in the mean time.

Besides the fluid animation and grotesque imagery, the next most shocking element of Akira is its music. Wavering between tencho-like drum beats and wailing singers evocative of traditional Japanese songs, the music is as discordant as the movie, and as ill-defined as the characters' dreams for the future.

Akira's place in anime
Akira's important for its origins and impact. It began as a literally epic manga, nearly 2,000 pages long, which was already very popular when the movie was made. Moreover, the movie was given a large budget, and was animated using traditional, Disney-style "full" animation--there are no recycled lip flaps in the film.

More importantly, Akira was wildly popular, setting attendance records for animated films in Japan. It made over 6 billion yen on an investment of about 1.1 billion. It proved that money invested in anime would pay off.

This opened the doors for investment in anime. The vast amount of anime produced in the 1990's can trace much of their financial investment back to the success of Akira (and, thus, the American anime fandom which would go on to subsidize the Japanese industry, which "grew up" on the anime of the 1990's).