All These Creations: March 2015

From Wikipedia

Year: 1988

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

Writer: Katsuhiro Otomo, Izo Hashimoto

Stars: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Tessho Genda

“Akira” is a gritty dystopian sci-fi thriller that depicts the city of Neo-Tokyo in 2019, 31 years after World War III. The futuristic city is in chaos with violent riots on the streets and warring teenage gangs on motorcycles. The plot of the film focuses on the gang leader Kaneda and his younger friend Tetsuo. Accidentally they get involved with a dissident group, that’s trying to unveil a secret government project. The film is based on Katsuhiro Otomo's manga of the same name and explores mainly the first half of the story.

“Akira” is considered by many to be the first movie that brought Japanese animation to the attention of western audiences. It also showed Hollywood that animation can be efficiently used for gritty and adult topics. It is certainly one of the most influential films in the genres of animation and sci-fi at the least. And just a reminder: “Akira” isn’t a family film, it’s an R-rated feature with some graphic and disturbing scenes.

Since the manga of “Akira” is over 2000 pages long and the story is very complex, don’t expect to necessarily get all the answers by the end of the movie. “Akira” gives all the basics, but doesn’t hold your hand, saving you from big chunks of exposition and awkward scientific explanations by the characters. Even without clarifying everything, the movie manages to explore (at least partially) various ambitious themes, mainly focusing on the dichotomy destruction – creation, also evolution – dehumanization, politics, friendship etc. Here I must admit that after seeing “Akira” two times I’m still not completely confident in these conclusions. It’s such an electrifying ride and there’s so much going on, it may leave you wanting more and I’m sure there’s plenty to learn from the manga. Having in mind the dense and dynamic nature of the film, I was happy with the story. Although not completely rounded, it’s more than what most big sci-fi action movies will give you. There’s also an argument that the main heroes could benefit from some more character development and I could understand that – it would be nice, only if the film was longer, but I couldn’t say that they were underdeveloped either. While I was watching it I didn’t really need anything more. Sure, I would spend some more time with them, but not because I didn’t like them – on the contrary. I might just get the manga.

“Akira” exceeds in what very few films manage to do. It creates its own unique world that’s so vast, yet extremely dense: you can almost feel the weight of the buildings and hear the roar of bikes and angry protesters around every corner. It has an outstanding style achieved with 160 000 single images, which is 2/3 times more than usual. It also set another record for animated film by utilizing 327 colors, 50 of which were specifically manufactured for the movie. That’s due to the fact that most of “Akira” takes place at night, a setting which animators usually shun away from, because of increased color requirements. “Akira” is also one of the first Japanese films with the voices recorded before the animation. Unlike American productions, in Japan the animation is normally created first. All these innovations cost about ¥1.1 billion ($11 million) - a record for Japanese animated film at the time.

When movies create fictional worlds I often find that an entire animated universe is much more fascinating and convincing than bunch of CGI effects mixed with real images. The attention to detail, the stylistic quality of “Akira” is great example of how this can be achieved. If I have to make a comparison I’d say that the look of Neo Tokyo and its atmosphere is closest to that of “Blade Runner”, but still distinctive and maybe even more breathtaking (while I acknowledge the disadvantages of “real” movies). I can’t even start thinking about how the thousands of buildings and miniscule windows were painted by hand.

Much of the unique “Akira” feel is due to the soundtrack, too. With emphasis on drums and the use of big choir the music feels very tribal and visceral, but still futuristic. And it hasn’t aged in any way. The music is the sound of the city, its gangs and its desperate, enraged citizens, as well as its “mystical” secrets. At times it may sound a bit too “visible” for some, but Japanese film-makers don’t like hiding a great soundtrack as many western directors and composers often do. The use of silence is also integrated to a great effect in “Akira”.

Look out for the famous toys scene, the music for which is nice and simple at first glance, but also incredibly creepy and haunting. It wouldn’t be as legendary if it wasn’t for the great use of sound and silence. This composition can be just as unsettling as any of the classic horror soundtracks. And unbelievably Tsutomu Ohashi (under the pseudonym Shoji Yamashiro) wrote it before seeing a single scene or script for the movie. It was only partially edited to fit the scenes afterwards. In one fighting episode the vocals are structured as a sequence of gasps and it may sound absurd on paper, but it’s amazingly fitting and invigorating when you hear it in the scene. And this is just one of the things that you can find only in “Akira”, along with other jaw-dropping moments and particularly dream sequences. Even the movie poster itself is a cult image. Thus, “Akira” successfully demonstrates how animated films can surpass the live-action ones in creativity and rich cinematic techniques. Not accidentally, in 1999 Roger Ebert wrote an essay titled “Japanese animation unleashes the mind”.

P.S. Watch it with subtitles! The English dub isn’t in any way better than the original, the characters don’t even sound like angry teenagers, but like kids from Disney movies and most importantly – it just doesn’t make sense, the story and the characters are fundamentally Japanese. On that note: Although being delayed for many years, Warner Bros’ live-action “Akira” remake unfortunately hasn’t been completely shut down. But let’s pray it does, because this PG-13 project with grown-up American cast set in Manhattan and helmed by an average director that hates the source material, would turn out very much like this: