Upon the fourth viewing

Rating: 10/10 (21 September 2001)

I have already written a review for this film, written after the second time I saw it (actually, a long time after my second viewing); I suggested a different way of looking at it, an approach more directed at the human aspects of this film (explored even further later in this review), and handed it a 9/10. It's greatest flaw, I stated, was that its story was far too complicated and difficult for its own good. Although by the second time I had understood it a lot more than the first time, many parts were still undecipherable. On my third viewing, on the new Pioneer Special Edition DVD (VERY highly suggested; you can't get the edition with the collector's tin anymore, but a plastic, and actually a better box is still available), I finally got to see it in widescreen and finally in Japanese. The Japanese (or the subtitles rather, since I don't speak the language) reveals more of the political level of the story. On my fourth viewing, the first one when I watched it entirely alone, I connected the story a little better, but many questions were still unanswered. But now my attitude is this: who cares?
Few doubt its visual mastery; only Princess Mononoke is comparable in the level of detail. I would say that Akira is still, even compared to Mononoke, on a level all its own. It's something that most people tend to look over when they're examining animation, but the techniques of the direction are actually highly developed. The techniques of direction in animation are still far behind those of live action film because the medium is not taken seriously. The Japanese are solving this problem, but Akira is still its peak.
I have previously talked about its more human side, trying to shut those up who accuse it of being nothing but spectacle. Here, too, comparing it with Mononoke, which stands as the most universally liked anime film in America (despite what Disney thinks; btw, if you think I'm ragging on Mononoke Hime, I do love it. Check out my user comment on it, although I don't quite like it as much as I did upon my first viewing), I think the emotional and human values of Akira are greater. There has been a constant fuss about the ambiguity of Mononoke's characters. "There're no good guys or bad guys," is a popular phrase that I think even I used to describe the characters in the film. If there are no purely good guys, then what is Ashitaka, for instance? Akira's characters are actually much more ambiguous. I bizarrely chose to compare Ashitaka with Travis Bickle, the crazy taxi driver from, well, Taxi Driver in describing how complex I felt his character was. I'm embarrassed that I said such a silly thing; not that Ashitaka, despite his good- guy ethics, isn't a complex character; it's just that comparing him with Travis Bickle implies something that it oughtn't to. Now Tetsuo can be fairly compared with Travis Bickle. As Roger Ebert once said about Bickle, Taxi Driver is a great film because we can all identify with Bickle, even if we would never go as far as he did.
Tetsuo is the same way: there is an enormous amount of pathos in that character. Caneda is just as well developed. To see just how well written this script is, follow Caneda's developement throughout the film. He is not the same person at the end. Kaori, Yamagata, Kai, the Colonel, Masaru, Kiyoko, and Takashi have quite a bit of depth, too. Perhaps the only characters who come off a little thin are Kei and Ryu; this is because of the difficulties the screenwriters had in developing that particular aspect of the film, the revolution. I'm not sure, for instance, why they were smuggling Takashi away at the film's beginning. Maybe a fifth viewing will reveal more of those aspects. Of course, the politics are only supposed to be working as the background to the struggle between Tetsuo and Kaneda.
On this fourth viewing, Akira reveals itself to be one of the best science fiction movies ever made, one of the best Japanese movies I've ever seen, maybe the best (and I have seen a lot), and easily the best animated film I've ever seen. It also stands now, in my opinion, as one of the greatest masterpieces in cinema.

PS: No, actually, I'm not a fanboy. Check out my other reviews to get a clearer picture of who I am.