Akira (1988)

Warning: this movie contains scenes of excessive violence, blood, and nightmare fuel, only watch if you do not mind all these elements.

Set 31 years after an unknown explosive in the center of Tokyo decimated the entire city, a new city is built, appropriately called Neo-Tokyo. However, The city is gripped by anti-government terrorist movements and violent biker gangs. One night, during a battle between rival gangs "The Capsules" and "The Clowns", a member of the capsules, Tetsuo Shima, crashes his motorcycle in a strange accident, shortly after this he is abducted by the Japanese military to take part in an unnamed shadowy project, meanwhile his best friend and leader of the gang Kaneda Shotaro gets involved with a terrorist organisation with questionable objectives.

Akira is a 1988 animated science fiction movie directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. Adapted from the manga of the same name, Akira has been rated as one of the greatest animated movies and one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, is widely considered to be a landmark in Japanese animation, and is regarded as being influential in the growth of popularity of anime outside of Japan, as well as being a heavy influence on much of the art in anime following it's release.

The art and animation of the movie is well deserving of its praise. The animation is super fluid, to use just one example: any scene where a character is talking they use a different facial expression for each syllable, there are admittedly reused frames at points throughout, but most of the frames are unique to that one scene. The background of each scene is richly and impeccably detailed. The character designs however are... debatable, there has definitely been a lot of time and effort put into ensuring that no two characters are exactly alike, but I personally dislike them, I cannot point out the exact reason why, I just don't. They even had to create 50 new colours for the movie.

The story was interesting, if a bit basic. The premise of the film was intriguing and the pace it kept throughout was exciting, but there were elements to the story that i felt could have been expanded on somewhat, and the writing could be kind of ridiculous at times (mostly towards the end of the film). The ideas presented by the film are quite thought provoking, and for the most part interesting, but could also get rather confusing at times (again, towards the end). However this is understandable when you consider the fact that this film is a MASSIVELY condensed version of the story in volumes 1-3, of a 6 volume manga, so some sacrifices would have to be made, even at the expense of making it rather confusing.

The English dub was mostly commendable. For the most part the acting seemed emotional enough to seem like what the characters would say at the time, but at certain points they just sounded emotionally detached, which didn't fit well with the situation they were in. The downside to having fluid animation for the speaking segments with pre-recorded Japanese dialogue, is the fact that when you switch out the dialogue to English, the words are no longer synced to the characters lip movements.

I would recommend watching the subbed version rather than the dub, but it honestly depends on personal preference between dubs and subs.

In conclusion: Akira is a very well made movie that is well deserving of its praise, whether it's one of the best science fiction anime of all time ii'm not certain, but it's at the very least an excellent movie and well worth the watch. 9.5/10