Brief Synopsis: The year is 2019 —  thirty-one years after a nuclear explosion destroyed Tokyo and sparked World War III. “Neo-Tokyo,” a chaotic, neon-gilded city, is rife with government corruption and gang violence. Kaneda and his best friend Tetsuo lead a biker gang known as the “Capsules,” but after a night out terrorizing the public, Tetsuo is injured and taken to a government hospital. He becomes the subject of scientific experimentation, and his psychic powers grow out of control. Kaneda, along with a group of revolutionaries, try to save his friend, but it may be too late to save Neo-Tokyo from destruction.

I chose Akira because it’s a movie that I still think waaaaay too much about. While writing this, it has now been 9 months since I watched it, and I still find myself replaying a scene in my head and just… overanalyzing the crap out of it because I still don’t know if it’s one of those movies I love because it is that good or if it’s one of those movies that’s so bizarre it forces me to love it because I have to spend so much energy simply thinking about it. Welcome to my life.

The artistic genius of Akira is undeniable, but it’s almost too much of a good thing because the visuals overpower other main elements such as plot, characters, and theme. To be perfectly honest, I was half-bored/half-overwhelmed for the first 10-ish minutes of Akira because the opening act throws so much world-building and spectacle at the audience that I had absolutely no idea what the plot was or who any of the characters were or if I was even watching a film and not just some strange, super long postmodernist video. By the time my hyperactive brain could latch onto an idea or a scene, it was already moving onto the next sequence. 

Once I adjusted to the tone of the film and embraced it — in all its eccentricities — I fell in love with Akira. (Or at least, I think I fell in love with it.) But there’s so much packed into the two-hour film that I know there’s a ton I missed out on. I mean…there’s a pack of military scientists performing human telekinetic experimentation following a nuclear World War III, three psychic kids who have the wrinkled faces of 1,000-year-old ancient beings, a group of revolutionaries fighting a corrupt capitalistic Neo-Tokyo government, a religious cult worshipping Akira as pretty much the second coming of Christ, a rampaging tormented teenager with godlike powers — and none of these are even the main character! You know, Kaneda, the guy with the iconic red motorbike featured on every poster and the character you can buy a full cosplay outfit on Amazon for $89.99? Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that all of this is happening while Tokyo is preparing for the 2020 Olympics?! (Yes, this film is so good that it predicted the 2020 Summer Tokyo Olympics, meaning it’s better at fortune-telling than Back to the Future II, which was off by one year in its prediction of the Cubs winning the World Series.)

Basically, what I’m really trying to say is that Akira is a powerful, mesmerizing film that will both awe you and haunt your nightmares with behemoth teddy bears and Tetsuo turning into…whatever godforsaken mass of flesh and blood that is at the end. But one thing I found fascinating is that the director Katsuhiro Otomo was still writing the manga series Akira (1982-1990) during the production of the anime. The manga and anime have a weird relationship where they both inspired the other since the manga series continued for two years after the film’s release. Heck, one could even say that the anime shouldn’t exist, because it’s not the finished narrative that Otomo had envisioned. (Some might also say it shouldn’t exist because the anime took over 160,000 hand-drawn frames to complete, which must have been absolute torture for all those animators.) What I’m getting at is that if the film feels like there’s way too much for any mere human to grasp during one viewing, it’s because it’s not meant to be seen once. Otomo poured 8 years of work into one two-hour film, and the result is a film with a fascinating plotline and even better characters — but none of which are fully developed in the way we might want. Instead, they’re left open-ended and, for the most part, interpretational for the audience. There are so many open threads and themes that Akira is one of those films I’m going to revisit several times, because I know I’ll get something different out of it each time.