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Artist-writer Katsuhiro 'd4tomo began telling the story of Akira as a comic book series in 1982 but took a break from 1986 to 1988 to write, direct, supervise, and design this animated film version. Set in 2019, the film richly imagines the new metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, which is designed from huge buildings down to the smallest details of passing vehicles or police uniforms. Two disaffected orphan teenagers--slight, resentful Tetsuo and confident, breezy Kaneda--run with a biker gang, but trouble grows when Tetsuo start to resent the way Kaneda always has to rescue him. Meanwhile, a group of scientists, military men, and politicians wonder what to do with a collection of withered children who possess enormous psychic powers, especially the mysterious, rarely seen Akira, whose awakening might well have caused the end of the old world. Tetsuo is visited by the children, who trigger the growth of psychic and physical powers that might make him a superman or a supermonster. As befits a distillation of 1,318 pages of the story so far,
i Akira
i0 is overstuffed with character, incident, and detail. However, it piles up astonishing set pieces: the chases and shootouts (amazingly kinetic, amazingly bloody) benefit from minute cartoon detail that extends to the surprised or shocked faces of the tiniest extra; the Tetsuo monster alternately looks like a billion-gallon scrotal sac or a Tex Avery mutation of the monster from
i The Quatermass Experiment
i0 ; and the finale--which combines flashbacks to more innocent days with a destruction of Neo City and the creation of a new universe--is one of the most mind-bending in all sci-fi cinema.
i --Kim Newman
| uuid: |
08CE95B4-327F-11D9-B741-000D93359050 |
| upc: |
0013023156890 |
| title: |
Akira |
| theatricalDate: |
24-07-2001 |
| stars: |
Mitsuo Iwata
Nozomu Sasaki
Mami Koyama
Tessh™ Genda
Hiroshi Ôtake
K™ichi Kitamura
Michihiro Ikemizu
Yuriko Fuchizaki
Masaaki Ôkura
Tar™ Arakawa
Takeshi Kusao
Kazumi Tanaka
Masayuki Kat™
Y™suke Akimoto
Masato Hirano
Yukimasa Kishino
Kazuhiro Kamifuji
Tatsuhiko Nakamura
Fukue It™
Issei Futamata |
| purchase date: |
09-11-2004 |
| publisher: |
Geneon [Pioneer] |
| published: |
24-07-2001 |
| price: |
$39.98 |
| net Rating: |
4.5 |
| MPAA Rating: |
R |
| minutes: |
124 |
| number of media: |
2 |
| last lookup time: |
187947424 |
| genre: |
Feature Films
Geneon
Animation
After the Apocalypse
Experiments Gone Wrong
Futuristic
Special Editions
Science Fiction & Fantasy |
| fullTitle: |
Akira (Special Edition) |
| features: |
Anamorphic
Animated
Color
Widescreen
NTSC
1.78:1 |
| edition: |
Special |
| director: |
Katsuhiro Ôtomo |
| currentValue: |
$21.99 |
| created: |
121718520 |
| country: |
us |
| aspect: |
DVD |
| asin: |
B00005MAM2
|