Akira (1991, VHS)

Of the thousands of anime movies out there, chances are that most people have only heard of a few of the more highly publicized North American releases. Movies such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ninja Scroll, and Akira are among the more widely known. The topic of this review however, is the latter film. I can remember seeing a lot of publicizing for Akira, which wasn't too common for anime at the time. The film looked stylish and cool nonetheless, but it went ignored by me for years and years. It wasn't until a summer or two ago that I was given the opportunity to view this movie. To..

According to some people, this is the father of modern anime. The old Anime I know of is very cartoony and unrealistic. Both in how they were drawn, how they moved, and the physical feats the characters performed. This movie is more like a live action movie rather than a cartoon/animated movie. The frame-rate was solid, the scenes are beautiful, and the music is top notch. This is yet another post-apocalyptic anime movie. The movie takes place in neo-Tokyo since Tokyo we know was blown up in WWIII. The story surrounds a motorcycle gang and the kids that make it up. They are a bunch of...

For the first movie that was the epitome of much of the anime that followed, AKIRA was landmark Japanese animation. It was not the first animated film, nor arguably the best, but it had all the elements to make it popular-and to keep it highly regarded by anime fans for the past 2 decades. In many other ways as well, it was groundbreaking animation. AKIRA was directed by the man who wrote and drew the AKIRA Manga (or comic) on which the movie was based, Katsuhiro Otomo. The screenplay was written with the help of Izo Hashimoto. (This is the only work attributed to him listed with IMDB) The...

Akira is one of the all time classic animations, featuring a complex story that works as a cautionary tale about letting our weapons get out of control. It's probably best if I don't go into the story too much as it really is one of those films where you are best entering it without knowing too much. So all I will give away is that it involves a gang of bikers in a post Apocalyptic Tokyo. After an accident one of there members named Tetsuo is taken away by sinister government forces and... that's all that I'm going to reveal. Needless to say though, the story does get very dark as it advances.