Anime has had a devoted following since its beginnings, but it didn't have much crossover appeal in the U.S. until Akira came along.

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2009)

Akira is phenomenal animation with all the hallmarks of an instant cult classic. It's about a gang of slum kids in post-apocalyptic Tokyo who band together to counter the scheming of a friend turned bad.
Akira is a stunningly executed animated film, adapted from a comic-strip by Katsuhiro Otomo, that generates so much audience adrenalin that the uneven narrative is easy to overlook. At the time, most anime was notorious for cutting production corners with limited motion, such as having only the characters' mouths move while their faces remained static. Akira broke from this trend with detailed scenes, lip-synched dialogue - a first for an anime production - and super-fluid motion as realized in the film's more than 160,000 animation cels. Akira is a landmark anime film that that influenced much of the art in the anime world that followed its release. It also led the way for the growth of popularity of anime outside of Japan.