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The first time I watched Akira was in 2005 after my friend, big into sci-fi anime, convinced me I’d love it. Love turned out to be too strong of a word, in fact, I really didn’t like it at all, but I was able to respect the piece for what it has done for the anime community and what it accomplished for its time.

For those who have yet to see Akira, I suggest you should, even if post-apocalypse, sci-fi isn’t your cup of tea. It’s the same as watching Citizen Kane. You don’t have to like it, but you should understand what an achievement the movie was and still is considered to be. Akira is a landmark film, making anime a popular form of entertainment outside of Japan and it also broke the habit of static facial expressions while characters speak. The movie was created under the Akira Committee, several companies brought together to bring Katsuhiro Otomo’s story to life on screen and have it live up to the grandeur and epic feel that resonated in his manga. Akira had no corners cut in production for the sake of its budget, creating a very fluid and beautiful style and offered constant and expressive faces for the cast, detailed backgrounds and scenes and wonderfully lip-synched dialogue, something today we take for granted but in 1988, was groundbreaking in anime work.

The film is very graphic in violence and disturbing imagery, especially near the climax, but again, remembering this was made over twenty years ago, it steals your breath while watching. The movie’s soundtrack is also quite famous, very dynamic, chilling and effective for the themes in Akira, which include social unrest, nuclear holocaust and delinquency, all touched with a hint of cyberpunk.

Akira is the story of a bike gang in Neo-Tokyo, thirty years after World War III. Kaneda’s childhood friend, Tetsuo goes missing after a run-in with a rival gang and it turns out he now has something to do with the government and a secret project involving children with mental abilities akin to Akira, a god-like figure responsible for so much destruction in the past. Kaneda, an unlikely and very human protagonist, goes in search to rescue Tetsuo, with the help of a young revolutionary named, Kei and one of his gang members, Kai.

I personally find the movie to be a slow and strange buildup, other critics complaining it was unable to get all of the manga into its allotted two hours, but overall, the film has received very high ratings. Please feel free to share your opinions on Akira.