Review of Akira

tl;dr The film was very character driven, yet because of how condensed the show was, I never attached to the characters and thus nothing worked for me. Most of the positive reviews here seem to be written by people who have read the manga, which explains a lot. Perhaps I would of enjoyed the show much more if not for how meaningless everything it seemed. I guess you could say that it's The End of Evangelion, but without the Neon Genesis Evangelion. The show mostly revolved around a 70 minute long landslide, with the rest devoted to setting the stage. Now, while the landslide was undoubtedlyimpressive, I can't help but think the the show got its priorities mixed up beforehand, there was definitely a buildup to the fallout, but the groundwork for all of this was never laid in the first place, which was developing the viewer's relationship to the characters. I firmly believe that this is the show's achilles heel and is the sole reason why I did not enjoy an otherwise interesting film.

The meaning of the plot disappointed me, it was an age old aesop that perhaps would've stuck with me had I been more immersed in the story. Again, the reason for this is the lack of empathy developed between me and the cast.

Aside from this, the animation was impressive, but not revolutionary or unbelievable. The OST was poorish, it seemed short, but atleast nothing was repeated too much because most of the show was without music, nothing stood out as being amazing, but atleast one tune struck me as bizarre. The theme is low tech mild dystopia cyberpunk, and at least the world was very well done. I'd love to watch a longer show set in the same universe.