Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: *AKIRA* article in Time Magazine
From: larryg@batpad.lgb.ca.us (Larry Greenfield)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 00:38:32 PST
Organization: The Batchelor Pad


Review of "Akira", from Time Magazine, Feb. 1, 1993 issue,
U.S. Edition, page 66-68. Posted without permission, for the
benefit of the readers here. (all typos are mine. I hope I
didn't make too many)

VIDEO A PULP-STYLE POP EPIC TITLE: Akira DIRECTOR: Katsuhiro
Otomo DISTRIBUTOR: Voyager/The Criterion Collection THE
BOTTOM LINE: Beserk graphic imagery and a termpering
idealism make for a real sci-fi skull buster.

By Jay Cocks

   With the very first scene, all the huggy-warmy feelings
usually associated with animated features take a nose dive. 
This futuristic movie on laserdisc is a virtuoso piece of
speculatvie fiction, a violent adventure tale, a
head-bending sci-fi morality play and a venture into the
higher realms of animation art that kicks all the squishier
conventions of the genre right in their well-upholstered
butt.
   There are no handsome princes or yearning princesses, no
talking-animal sidekicks or loveable syncopated props in
AKIRA.  This is the stuff of nightmare, closer in theme and
ambition to the so-called graphic novels like WATCHMEN than
anything that's ever been drawn for an American screen.  In
fact, AKIRA was derived from director Katsuhiro Otomo's
graphic novel series of the same name, and the movie, even
at 124 minutes, has the densely packed sweep and go-for-it
pep of a pop epic.
   Tokyo, pulverized in 1996 by an amuck scientific
experiment (Is there any other kind?), is in 2019, a place
of repressive political reactionaries, marauding radicals
and pill-popping motorcycle freebooters who do motorized
combat with each other on the ramps of the city's elevated
roadways.  In this story, the motorcyclers are the good
guys, mainly because everyone else is worse.  The
technocrats capture one teen and try to turn him into a
human receptacle for some kind of higher-energy field (Is
there any other kind?).  Things go haywire.  He menaces his
old buddies, threatens to reduce the entire city to rubble
and generally set the earth spinning sideways on its axis. 
Only one person can stop him: his best pal and main rival in
the motorcycle gang.  The guy with the coolest bike.
   AKIRA demands a certain tolerance for the more hyperbolic
aspects of pulp storytelling, but it always repays, never
tries your patience.  The movie is a visual dazzler.  Tokyo
is imagined down to the last noodle shop and intersection, a
place of deep night and lurid neon that looks like BLADE
RUNNER on spoiled mushrooms. It's no wonder that AKIRA,
first released in Tokyo in 1988, is still playing the
midnight-movie circuit in U.S. theatres.  So far, it's not
available on videotape either, which is fair enough.  Laser
disc-with its superior sound and resolution-can put AKIRA
right behind your eyes.  Watching it on tape would be like
trying to get the full experience from a flip-book.

------------------ end of article ----------------

I noticed one factual flaw: of course, Akira *IS* available
on tape.  Criterion only releases laserdiscs - they don't
deal in tapes, but Streamline, of course, has had the movie
out on tape for quite some time.

Well, interesting article.  Even more interesting that it
appeared in Time Magazine.

   :::::Larry:::::

:::::larryg@batpad.lgb.ca.us::::: // :::::Larry Greenfield:::::
::::::::Just your average modeming Classical Violinist:::::::::
:::::::::::Using a 6809-based Tandy Color Computer 3:::::::::::