Essential Anime

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2003)

Akira is the epitome of anime: uber-violent, complicated, and, especially for us western viewers, cryptic and difficult to decipher. Of course, it also features an end-all, kick-in-the-head, apocalyptic ending from hell that should remain with you for quite a while. To put it in terms of American movies, Akira is essentially an ultra-violent Blade Runner ingrained with heavily Japanese subtexts (search for identity, suffocation from the urban sprawl, fascism, atomic destruction) and with some 2001-tinged metaphysics thrown in at the end for good measure (and to confuse most viewers even more). It's all too sprawling and unfocused to be real a classic, but Akira still remains as one of the most, albeit sporadically, impactful sci-fi/action movies ever made. It also set the mold for just about every sci-fi anime made since, though it would be 13 years before Rin's "Metropolis" (2001) came along and finally turned the disparate elements of sci-fi anime into a truly excellent movie.