Comic Book Movies 101: Akira

10th Mar 2011

Neo Tokyo is about to explode. That was the video tagline for this film. It was the early 90s and Akira had been staring at me from the shelf in the local WH Smith for many a month now. Quite why I hadn’t worked up the courage to buy it was probably down to the fact that I was a young teen and had no job. But the cover intrigued me; the main character in his red biker outfit holding a big futuristic looking gun and looming over a cityscape (with a large bomb superimposed behind him as it turned out). The character also looked pretty mean (pissed off is probably a more accurate description). Being a teen – when anger and confusion are all the rage – naturally the image spoke to me. And this is an animated film we are talking about here. But so taken was I by this image it was a major influence on a story I would go onto to draft without seeing the film (my version of what was inside the box).

I should have bought the title sooner for two reasons. One: it’s a damn good film. Two: I spent far too long raising expectations in my mind for what this futuristic story of biker gangs on the streets would be about. This expectation stayed in a fairly westernised fiction I had created and allowed no room for eastern storytelling influence. So when I finally got round to working up the guts and the cash to take the risk on this title I was very surprised. Like many of my favourite films I didn’t know what to make of it first time round. I loved bits, hated others. But through repeated viewing I came to understand them and then followed the rest of the cult following that had brewed around the same time for this film.

I expected an onslaught of biker gang violence from start to end, and while we get that in the first quarter, it’s richly layered with many other issues. It’s from this beginning that Akira branches out into something much broader. Past present and future. The very strands of humanity are questioned as superpowers scramble to uncover the power of a bomb within a person. Yes Akira requires more than one viewing if you’re to soak up the story as well as the astounding visuals (this is 1988 animation still beating out many of today’s).

Like Blade Runner, you could take many a still image from this film and use it as a piece of wall art. It frankly astounds me that no animated feature has topped, or even tried to top this since. Perhaps with the birth of Pixar and digital animation it’s now become more about the tools then the artistry.

Akira demands repeated viewings to take in its visual style and also to keep tabs on all the different characters. As well as the bikers and their girlfriends we have the three blue-skinned psychics, the military soldiers and doctors, the politicians as well as the members of the terrorist organisations – all of them knocking heads. At the centre of this is the friendship between the headstrong Kaneda (the guy on the poster) and Tetsou (the member of the gang everyone dismisses and makes fun of).

Naturally it is Tetsou who finds himself in the awkward position of having to try to prove himself and in doing so collides with one of the blue-skinned children. From this accident Tetsou takes on their powers and struggles for a large part of the film to come to terms with them from a military hospital. He suffers horrid dreams, sometimes inflicted upon him by others until his psyche breaks down and he goes mental on us towards the end. His struggle to be accepted ends with him gaining the upper hand and rejecting anyone who would have ridiculed him. This leads to a battle between him and Kaneda. But it doesn’t end there – the action then goes beyond surreal in a climax that stretches the imagination to breaking point. The power of Akira is unleashed and causes an ending, but a rebirth at the same time, as Tetsou becomes the new superpower.

It’s the characters of Tetsou and Kaneda that really carry the picture. It’s a broken down older/younger brother relationship that spins on its axis and is rightfully polarised. The closing moments of the film in bleached-out flashbacks show us the beginnings of their friendship and make you wonder what happened to make one dominate the other.

The subtext is so rich that there are almost endless aspects to look at and write about. The political situation from high up in war room-like offices to the fire-ridden streets where protestors force their hands against an oppressive police force is all there to read into. It’s almost insane to have a film so rich in detail. But one this rich is always worth revisiting. You’ll find many a new surprise with each rewatch.

There’s been talk of a live action update –personally I can see Jake Gyllenhall as a bullying Kaneda, and Elijah Wood as the bullied Tetsou (see the climax of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and compare it to a crazed Tetsou with his red cape on). Whether this film makes its way to our screens anytime soon or not is debatable. But when it does we can only hope there’s a visionary behind the lens. You can’t hack at Akira and expect an audience to respect it.

Steven Hurst