A K I R A

This one's pretty impressive. Akira is a real classic. Every anime fan should have seen it at least once. I don't own a copy myself, but I may get one just to have it in my collection.

Okay, first the facts and stuff. AKIRA was based on a comic series and is very different to most animes. The animation is probably the smoothest you'll ever see. The main noticable difference with the animation is that the faces are animated differently. Normally on an anime, theanimation is all done from a script, and the voices are added on afterwards, and it is the actor's job to do the best they can to synchronise their voice with the characters facial animation. Now on AKIRA, The japanese actors did their acting, and then the facial animation was made to fit the voice acting, Disney style. However, the problem with this is that it makes the dubbing look bad.

The first thing I noticed about AKIRA was how graphical it was. There's a lot of blood and violence, and it really looks good. For example, towards the start you see a man trying to escape a load of soldiers with this little grey-blue wierd looking kid ^_^; and then he gets shot repeatedly, violently. Then as he's dying, he's struggling, crawling along in a pool of his own blood, and as he tries to tell the kid to run he chokes up a load of blood. Watching this really sends a chill down your spine, and a much better chill than any non-anime movie can give you.

The storyline is just brilliant. Great stuff. A guy called Tetsuo (who seems about 16 years old) is kept in a ward and is given superhuman powers (he doesn't know about it) to stop AKIRA, a terrible legend spoken about all over the world. As the powers slowly take effect, Tetsuo experiences agonising pain and terrifying holusonations. He tries to escape the ward and the guards stop him, but he screams and causes the walls to desintegrate. He escapes and hears about AKIRA, a force which is currently more powerful than himself as they didn't get to finish his powers because he escaped. Tetsuo demands to know who AKIRA is, and he wants to fight him. By now Tetsuo is slowly but surely going insane with power. Later on, he proves his invincibility to a crowd, they AKIRA worshippers all start shouting things like "AKIRA IS HERE!" as everyone now beleives that AKIRA has arrived. As the story unflods, it proves that AKIRA isn't even a person, just an project, and Tetsuo becomes the true hazard. Now hardly sane and with a robotic arm, Tetsuo's body is reacting to the powers and going crazy, and what's worse, his body is rejecting the robot arm.(lack of drugs to stop this from happening) This leads to complete tragedy for Tetsuo and the rest of the world!!!

The wierd thing about this anime is that it has a great feel, and the action is non-stop, but towards the end it just gets a little boring. Near the end of the movie it goes through a load of Tetsuo's memories and it seems to take years. I was just waiting for it to hurry up and end. Although the movie does have an ending. there's no real conclusion to it, because the movie was made before the comic series was finished and they didn't want to give away the end, it has one of those "It's over... for now..." endings.

Although it's a little confusing and screwed, AKIRA really is a great anime and unless you absolutely can't stand blood or voilence then this is a must. A great anime and a true classic, AKIRA really is something special.

Rating out of 5 stars: ****½

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