Review of Akira

After typing this I realized I need to watch it again to give a better review but until then…. I first saw akira when I was 14 I think. Got the lend of it off a guy in my class. He and his mates were hyping this film up to me, and I figured I’d give it a shot myself. My first impressions weren’t that great. While the art was good, it was the story, characters and pacing that let me down. Why were there little old man children, what was the point of him turning into a giant blob,these thing I just didn’t understand.

A few years later and few years more mature I gave it another go. Able to better get what was going on and having since watched a lot more anime, my opinion of it did improve. I still dont understand what the hype was and id say the movie was average at best.

Story (im gonna be kinda vague here so as not to spoil)

From what I can remember (its been a while) it starts off following a biker gang through neo Tokyo as they get up to the sort of stuff you expect from a teenage biker gang, riding around, fighting rival gangs that sort of thing. They run into the military chasing a boy who looks like hes really old. One of the group (tetsou) gets taken away by the military. When he awakes he has telekinetic powers. He escapes the facility hes in and his power begins to go to his head corrupting him as he was portrayed as a rather weak character before who envied the bike gang leader for being stronger and sticking up for him. Then its up to the protagonist/ bike gang leader to try and stop his friend from destroying the world. Also the character Akira eventually helps (theres a bit of mystery around him, hes kinda like jesus).

Characters

Didn’t care for any of them. I know tetsou had to be weak and whiny so that later he can be powerful and arrogant but this led me to just not care about what happened to him. The main character was a stereotypical anime lead. Everyone else barely get any development. Generally that’s the problem with the characters, any depth to them is not provided by in the movie.

The art was good and there were a few memorable pieces of music. The film suffers in that it doesn’t provide enough depth, because of this I didn’t feel attached to any of the characters and spent a good portion of the movie wondering when Akira would actually show up.

While I may have only really said bad things about this film I still recommend people watch it as it is an anime that everyone will eventually come across at some stage and it is still worth having an opinion on it because of this. Whether that opinion is good or bad. I’ve known people with no interest in anime at all and yet they’ve heard of Akira.