Review of Akira

(Originally written as my Letterboxd review in 05/08/2022) So here's the deal. I watched this movie for the first time almost 10 years ago. I completely forgot it almost immediately because at the time I was too much of a normie to even care about movies. Fast forward to early 2022. I decided to start reading the Akira manga I did it because I had almost no memories of the movie but I was super interested in Otomo as an artist so I thought "eh why not see what his work as a mangaka is like". So I started reading the manga a few months ago andafter slowly going through it I finished it exactly today. I liked it a lot. The way the story went from cyberpunk to sci-fi adventure to post-apocalyptic gang warfare thriller to avant-garde metaphysical family drama was so exhilerating, I connected with some of the characters in ways I don't often do when reading manga. It was great. Then I rewatched this film

It was like going through it for the first time because I had very little memory of it aside from the iconic scenes. What surprised me the most was simply: this movie is VERY different from the manga! This is like a super abbreviation of the story originally published as the comics. There's like SO much more in the manga, I can't even begin to explain. The plot is extended to be a lot more complex, some characters have different origins, some characters have different conclusions, some villains go through a whole ass redemption arc, some literal gag characters become the most important elements in the plot, some characters who don't even get names in the movie have more "page time" than main characters... Anyways, it's very different

I would recommend the manga for those who liked the movie and wanted to experience more of this universe and its characters. I noticed that a lot of characters die in the film while their manga counterparts go all the way to the end, and I wonder if Otomo was asked by his editors to keep these characters alive when writing the manga while in the movie he was given more liberty to end them whenever he wanted. I think I actually like the manga and the film for kind of different reasons, but I can't deny that it's impressive that the movie was able to condense a somewhat complex story into 2 hours without it feeling confusing or abstract. In fact, I think it did a better job at explaining the concepts than the manga did!

Anyways this is a classic for a reason. It's not only a feat of animation but a definitive progenitor of the cyberpunk aesthetic. Not only that but it also is a story with independent but correlated layers that go from the more basic story of a maturing man learning to sacrifice himself for his loved ones, to the political plot which alludes to colonialism and fascist projects of racial purity and eugenics, to the more transcendental tale of the human condition coming in contact with superior modes of existence and finding its own place in the long thread of universal evolution

Better than I remembered!