Akira - original, thought-provoking, and spellbound

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2008)

First let me get the negative out of the way.
I felt very strongly that the original American voice acting for it was better then the new 2001 release of the film. The dialog is slightly different and you got more into the characters through the art of voice acting. Makes me appreciate voice acting so much now that I have heard both versions.
The movie still has me thinking and I've owned it or over ten years now. THe story is so profound, so deep, it certainly is a moralistic as well as a philosophical movie.
This is not an action movie as many Americans sometimes categorize anime (although there is action in it). Nor will you find cute talking animals. This, all in all, is an adult movie, not for kids under the age of 13 in my opinion. One thing you can generalize about serious anime is that their plot lines or stories are so complex and don't usually focus entirely on a single characters. More times than not they focus on idea's rather then people, which makes for a good thinking movie.
Without giving away the movie, this is a serious film about morality and technological achievements in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, which is always interesting to me since there are many post-apocalyptic movies coming out of Japan and the fact that they are in a very real sense, a post-apocalyptic nation, having atoms bombs dropped on them at the end of WWII.
This film does stand the test of time