Review of Akira

I was pleasantly surprised to sit down and watch Akira for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it despite its age. Visually the anime holds up very well with animation that not only provides the viewer with smooth captivating action scenes but also a large sense of scale that does a great job of immersing the viewer in a different world. The world of Akira is very interesting (and quite amusing) taking place in 2019 but being very futuristic and reminding me of the setting you would find in something like Dredd or Cyberpunk 2077. The environments are very detailed for an anime this old andvisually I was more than happy overall, the only issue I have is with the character designs which could have benefitted from more variety and originality.

In terms of sound I think this film does a good job overall with well executed sound effects and voice acting (Netflix dub) however I think that a more interesting soundtrack could have added more to the action scenes.

When it comes to the story itself I think Akira is well paced and certainly provides entertainment value however its obvious that the writers struggled to cram as much information from the anime as they could into a 2 hour runtime. There are many plotholes and moments throughout that I struggled to understand and the ending in particular was nonsensical, a problem that I recently had when watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time. I also think the characters are mostly flat which is a shame.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time with this movie and can understand why it had such a huge impact but I think Akira is in desperate need of more content to flesh out its world and characters. An anime series would be very beneficial as its clear that there is way more to this story.