Akira review – apocalyptic anime's startling message of global annihilation

[Saiyan0321]

Akira review – apocalyptic anime's startling message of global annihilation​

deeply strange message from the future is what this movie is here to (re)deliver: both post- and pre-apocalyptic, a nuclear-age parable of anxiety to compare with Godzilla. Akira, released in 1988, is the cult Japanese cyberpunk animation from director Katsuhiro Ôtomo, who also created the original manga serial. (It is set in the impossibly futuristic year of 2019, so maybe last year would actually have been the time to rerelease it.)

Thirty years on from a devastating explosion that razed the city, a new capital – Neo-Tokyo – has been born: sprawling, chaotic, like the LA of Blade Runner. The city is beset with violence from warring motorbike gangs, and by protesters rioting against unfair taxes. A hatchet-faced army officer says that Neo-Tokyo is “a garbage heap made of hedonistic fools”.


Biker teen Kaneda (voiced by Mitsuo Iwata) is in the middle of a confrontation with a rival mob, when his friend Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki) accidentally crashes into a bizarrely wizened child-goblin figure who has apparently escaped from a top-secret government research facility investigating this race of troll-infants with bizarre powers.


Tetsuo finds that he himself now has staggering telekinetic abilities, and becomes public enemy number one for these sinister G-men. He assumes superhuman qualities, evolving into a new entity, a virtual messianic figure for this occult race of uniquely gifted or cursed lab rats. It is Tetsuo’s destiny to discover the truth about Akira, a much-rumoured godhead or wellspring of essential cosmic power that is to be found somewhere underneath the city: it may have been responsible for the explosion 30 years ago.

Akira review – apocalyptic anime's startling message of global annihilation

The landmark Japanese cyberpunk animation from 1988 re-emerges as a deeply strange nightmare about destruction and rebirth

www.theguardian.com

 

[Saiyan0321]

Well in terms of internal affairs of Japan, I am more entuned with Anime so i am gonna post alot of Anime related news here and that gentlemen is softpower

 

[Yoyo]

That aside, what the heck is going on with today's Japanese society/youth? Why are they so "weird" for lack of a better word?

75 years of US occupation since the end of the WW2 seems to have turned them into... weirdos.

 

[Saiyan0321]

That aside, what the heck is going on with today's Japanese society/youth? Why are they so "weird" for lack of a better word?

75 years of US occupation since the end of the WW2 seems to have turned them into... weirdos.

My money is that they are peaceful. This is what happens when you dont have to worry about an enemy or defense or even any global world ambitions. You get weirdness. Thankfully we have an entire neighborhood of enemies and ambitions that are either greater pakistan or greater Islamistan, to keep us from being weird. Yep nothing beats high defense budgets and sense of paranoia.

 

[Anmdt]

That aside, what the heck is going on with today's Japanese society/youth? Why are they so "weird" for lack of a better word?

75 years of US occupation since the end of the WW2 seems to have turned them into... weirdos.

I can't claim they have changed that much after WWII , they were the same.

 

[Isa Khan]

Well in terms of internal affairs of Japan, I am more entuned with Anime so i am gonna post alot of Anime related news here and that gentlemen is softpower

Should've opened a thread in general section. Anyway always glad to see an otaku.

@Webslave @Cabatli_53