Akira is a copyright of Toho Entertainment
Many film enthusiasts consider Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira to be the greatest Japanese anime ever created; the film surpassed American critics' perceptions of what was possible in an animated feature film, and defied expectations of the marketability of such a film to an adult audience. Written and directed by Otomo, Akira was based on a manga of the same name and was a sharp departure from the anime that preceded it. Anime, unlike American animated feature films, often is targeted towards an adult audience and Akira is even more mature than the more prosaic forms that are encountered in the genre. With the prospect of an American-produced live action adaptation of the anime a virtual certainty at this point, now would be a good time to discuss the film and delve into some of the reasons why the American version is certain to fail. There are no robots in Akira, but the ability of the film to address non-human forms of life and the concept of human evolution away from time 0, the present, give this film a relevance in the genre of robots in film.
Akira is the tale of a group of young people that live in the city of Neo-Tokyo in the near future. Japanese anime has a lingering obsession with depictions of the mega-city of Tokyo as both endearing to the Japanese psyche, but also dangerous, toxic, and parasitic to mankind. The original city of Tokyo was destroyed in 1988 during World War III and the modern Japanese erected a replacement on an island near the site of the former city. The story revolves around two characters called Tetsuo and Kaneda that grew up in the same orphanage. and operate within the same youth gang. Early on in the film, Tetsuo is kidnapped by government operatives that perform biological testing on children with special powers, "psionics". While the government is attempting to recapture a psionic that has fled their base, they find Tetsuo and soon realize that he is the most powerful child that they have encountered. Tetsuo's friend Kaneda attempts to find him and free him and join forces with one of the rebel groups that fight against the government. Meanwhile, Tetsuo's powers begin to evolve very rapidly and he begins having many strange visions.
Eventually, Tetsuo learns about "Akira", who was another psionic of incredible power that was killed many years before; Akira has developed an iconic reputation: a rallying point for rebels that wish to destroy the government. Tetsuo wants to become as powerful as Akira, he essentially wants to become this super-being Akira, but the other psionic children attempt to stop him. Tetsuo escapes from the base where he is held and the army wages a war in the city of Neo-Tokyo in attempt to bring Tetsuo back. Tetsuo has a showdown with the army and Kaneda meets him as well. Akira is awakened by the psionic children in order to stop Akira from destroying Neo-Tokyo. Much of the city ends up being destroyed anyway. Akira takes Tetsuo and the psionic children "back with him", but it is not clear if any of them are alive or dead.
Akira is not merely a depiction of a bleak future in which human beings are even smaller and more insignificant than they appear to be at present, but it is a tale of human evolution and the process of adolescent development in such a meaningless time. Interestingly, the only ones that appear to evolve are the disfigured psionic children in the film, who almost seem to evolve by forced evolution at the hands of the adults around them through their scientific testing to hone their powers. This inadvertently hearkens back to an interesting concept in human biology: humans have detached themselves from the pure evolutionary pressures from the past, so the future of human evolution may be conscious and not merely at the hands of nature. Again, there are no robots in the film, but the concept of human evolution in the future is not dissimilar to the musings on the human-robot co-evolution that is certain to occur. Akira is probably most notable to American audiences for its violence, which I believe is not only something that is telling about Japanese youth culture of the era (the film was released in 1988), but also indicative of the adult-type concerns that young people of the future (i.e. right now) will be likely to be dealing with. Akira is an incredible film and is recommended to everyone not just as an action film, but also as a thought provoking piece of cinema.
