Review of Akira

This is my first MAL review so please don't judge too harshly, but it's just all my friends are huge fans of this movie and I just can't see it. Also spoiler warning ahead: Story - 4/10 Honestly, the story wasn't a 4. It was a 2. But the reason I give it a 4 is because I genuinely love the idea. It's just, it's executed SO badly. Akira is a movie about the presence of absolute energy within humans and the government doing horrific human experiments to see if they can get them to control it. It's an interesting premises with potential to be very good.And put into that the other themes that SHOULD'VE been prevelant throughout the movie such as differences in class, political corruption and political unrest and we COULD'VE had such a good story. But, the 2 words that represent this movie the most are probably should've and could've. Because nothing was done rightly, at all! Absolutely none of the underlying themes were explored, they were only hinted as the movie almost appeared to be trying ti discretely portray the themes throughout the whole damn movie.

Another thing which really annoyed me about the film is the lack of character development. The movie was just 1 action scene after the other BAM BAM BAM BAM, no time for character development or plot building or even building a base at the beginning for the plot. Literally in the first like 5 minutes we are just in a bike chase action scene, like come onnnnnnn!!!! Atleast introduce the premises to the movie please. I was sat confused for the whole movie until when tetsuo broke out of the hospital, at which point the movie turned into a massive game of "chase tetsuo please i beg". But yeah, due to just the shear amount of action scenes and just NOT ENOUGH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, it made almost any fight useless, but more on that later.

Again sorry another thing that annoyed me. This movie tried to be too profound and perceptive and "on a higher level of intellect" if you get me. It's as if you need to be on some higher level of intelligence to understand this movie. And I like shows like that. Honestly. But, akira did not do this well at all. Instead of further exploring the themes it hints at and further developing the story (and maybe introducing the basis and premises of the movie at the beginning so I know what's going on or maybe idk somehow EXPLAIN SOMETHING ABOUT THE DAMN MOVIE at some point) and further developing the characters, instead it goes about its desire to be a "profound, "deep" movie by just never fully exploring anything. And don't even get me STARTED on the terrible, awful, non-existant world building. We are literally spawned into this world and just bombarded with action scenes and now world building scenes at all and so I just don't care about anyone and I spent the whole movie trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge from the beginning of the movie.

"What's going on?" "Figure that out for yourself!"
"Who are these characters?" "Figure THAT ONE out for yourself too!"
"Ok, can we atleast get a bit of a basic summary of the world (what's going, how the system of this world works if you get me) and can we maybe explore the interesting themes the movie keeps hinting at?" " No no, of course not because hinting hits different, you gotta be intelligent and smart to get THIS move B)"

(accurate representation of what the movie would reply to you if you asked it some questions)

Art - 6/10

I think the art was good. Honestly I loved the colour scheme and I loved the buildings. The fight scenes were honestly very well animated (although more about those to come) and generally it was some good art. However, why are the characters so poorly designed? They're all the same! Kei is the same person as Kaneda who is the same as the other random girls they hook up with who is the same as the biker gang which kaneda and tetsuo are all part of. I'm not asking for big hot attractive waifu-bait, because it just wouldn't fit in this movie. But, try a bit to make the women look like women and less like grumpy apes please.

Sound - 6/10

Not incredible, but decent though. Was too quiet at times and peaked at times a bit. But overall decent for the 80s and it's even decent for now. I enjoyed the creepier effects some of the sounds gave it kinda gave an unknown sense to the movie (which again more about that to come) and the sound effects were good imo.

Character - 2/10

Oh my God, this was legitimately awful. Terrible. If it wasn't for Tetsuo, this would be a 0. Tetsuo carries this but I need more than 1 of my characters to be semi-developed!!!! And tetsuo wasn't even that well developed he just sticks out like a sore thumb in this movie because literally no one else just gets any development. This lack of character development makes any fight useless! I don't care if kei dies (Oh my God don't get me started on the terrible and very forced romantic subplot the movie tried to implement), I don't care if kaneda dies, I don't care if the colonel dies or if anyone in that movie dies except tetsuo and the 3 little kids didn't intrigue and evoke SOME emotion from me. And this lack of care for any character in the whole movie kinda negates any effects from fight scenes despite the very good art and animation, because there's simply no emotional jeopardy. Just none. I don't care if any of them die.

Enjoyment - 3/10

It was so confusing at the start due to the terrible world building. The terrible, awful, non-existant world building. I just can't, I was so confused for the first hour of this film and the next hour was just a tetsuo hunt. Again, no character development and just, confusion and a general lack of emotion from me when I watched this.

Overall - 5/10

The reason I gave it such a high score (considering the harsh review I just gave it) is because I DO see why people like this. It does explore sometimes a little into human psychology and how when anyone is given any power it'll instantly corrupt them, and other semi-interesting themes about human psychology. Not interesting enough for me to bump up the score more than a 5, but I see why people enjoy it. Just not for me :)