Greatest Anime Film Of All Time

Rating: 9/10 (13 August 2006)

Akira is the greatest Anime film of all time, perhaps even one of the greatest Science Fiction titles. I haven't been the biggest Anime fan over the years, but this movie completely blew me away.
Akira takes place in 2019 in a post WWIII Tokyo (Now Neo Tokyo), which was destroyed by a Nuclear Weapon in 1988 (the beginning of WWIII). A Tokyo plagued with government corruption, drugs, biker gangs, poverty, and civil unrest, where every day could be your last.
Akira starts off looking like some kind of mad max Japanime rip off, but what unfolds goes beyond imagination. The Capsules are a gang in Neo Tokyo, who are at war with a rival bike gang.(The Clowns) One night on a high speed chase on the highway, young aspiring gang member Tetsuo Shima, collides with a strange looking young boy in an explosion, and is thrown off his bike. The army then lands and takes Tetsuo, and the mysterious child, arresting Kaneda (the capsules leader), and his members. Tetsuo is taken to a secret military facility and hooked up to all sorts of machines, and put through tests, as they figure out his collision with their project, (the child who he collided with) gave him ultimate psychic abilities, that lied dormant in his mind for many years. His power is to strong to be controlled by anyone, as they conduct the same brain modifications on Tetsuo, as they did on their first project, the project from 1988 that went awry with catastrophic consequences, the project known as Akira...
The scientists keep Tetsuo on drugs, to hinder the releasing of the power, to experiment on him until they can perfect the ultimate power, but after attaining a serious injury at the test lab, (fighting with a giant monster teddy bear and bunny rabbit?) the power is released at an astounding rate to heal the injury quickly, and the drugs are partially made useless as he blasts his rooms door open, viciously murders 2 soldiers with a scientist, and sets out on a path of destruction to find the only one with a greater power then him, Akira.
Fueled by envy and hatred, Tetsuo takes out his rage on a society that has done him wrong, as he makes his way to the abandoned Olympic stadium in the ruins of Old Tokyo, destroying everything in his path. Tetsuo has no idea what will happen to him if the drugs used to hinder his power wear off, and becomes drunk with power, driven insane by the brain augmentations, drugs and his own mind, troubled by a terrible childhood, where he was always in the shadows of others, and seemingly had no one in the world who loved him, Tetsuos only goal is to awaken the Akira project, sealed under the Olympic Stadium for many years, and destroy it, to take over the world.
But as the drugs wear off, Tetsuo sees the error of his ways, as he can no longer control the power himself, and when Akira is released, Tetsuo is taken out of Neo Tokyo, to another dimension/universe, to have the only peace he can ever know, and sucked into this black hole with him is the city of Neo Tokyo, whose founders played god with humans, and suffered the most dire consequences imaginable for it...