Geek Kingdom: Akira Review

by Liam Lavoie

WARNING!

This issue of Geek Kingdom will be talking about a movie that contains sexual assault, child endangerment, animal cruelty and other heavy topics. If you aren’t comfortable with this, I would suggest that you skip this review.

My name is Liam Lavoie, and I’m here to bring you another issue of…

GEEK KINGDOM!

When the question of the most influential anime gets asked, a lot of answers will be thrown around. Is it perhaps Sailor Moon for getting anime on Saturday-morning cartoon runs in the 90’s? Or perhaps it was One Piece, as its long run cultivated a large community of extremely dedicated fans? While it is possible to debate this all day, it’s no doubt that one of, if not the most important anime of all time, has to be the 1988 film Akira.

What is the plot?

Akira is a 1988 cyberpunk anime film set in post World War 3 Tokyo and follows the exploits of young biker gang leader Shotaro Kaneda and his friends. After a battle with a rival gang, gang member, and Kaneda’s childhood friend, Tetsuo is injured. Tetsuo almost hits a small child who has escaped from a government lab and possesses immense psychic powers. Tetsuo is taken to the same lab to have his latent psychic abilities awakened, which ends up being a terrible mistake, inflating his ego and driving him mad. Meanwhile, Kaneda joins up with rebel fighter Kei to rescue Tetsuo from the lab, and hopefully win her over romantically. Soon the rescue mission turns into a race against time to stop Tetsuo from destroying Tokyo again and causing another calamity, just like what happened all those years ago…

What makes this movie so good?

Well, everything of course! The animation, while having a distinct art style far different from what modern audiences are more accustomed to, is incredibly fluid and dynamic. The design of Neo-Tokyo is absolutely stunning and truly evokes a sense of ever present despair that is prevalent throughout the film. In terms of the soundtrack, Akira manages to pull off an exciting, yet ominous, series of tracks that are all absolute bangers. Every aspect of a movie that you can imagine has been fine-tuned to near perfection to create an astounding once in a lifetime experience.

Unfortunate Issues

Although I’ve given nothing but praise for the movie so far, there is one thing that does need to be touched on; the plot. It’s not bad, in fact the plot is absolutely stellar. However, the best way to describe it is esoteric. If you aren’t constantly paying attention and trying to piece everything together while watching, the whole movie comes off as a confusing experience, especially without background knowledge on the overall themes in the movie. But going in blind and being confused about the story is part of what makes this movie so magical in the first place!

Why is it so important?

Back when Akira came out in the West in 1988, anime wasn’t well known in America. Sure, there were some anime that became popular like Astro Boy, but it wasn’t the same cultural behemoth found in western animated series like Looney Tunes. But, against all odds, upon its release, Akira managed to become a smash hit, cultivating an increased interest in anime within western audiences and causing networks to add dubs of popular anime to their roster of cartoons. Without Akira, anime would not nearly be as popular as it is today.

The Verdict...

Without doubt Akira is the quintessential anime movie. From great animation to a genius story told subtly throughout the events of the film, Akira manages to hit everything out of the park despite its more confounding elements. That’s why I’m giving this movie a…

10/10!

That’s right, Geek Kingdom’s first 10/10 review! Out of everything I’ve covered in this column, nothing has truly resonated with me more than Akira has. I highly recommend you watch this movie as soon as you can to experience something truly beautiful. I’m Liam Lavoie, and thank you for reading…

Thank you so much for reading the article, and I hope to see you soon on the next issue of…

GEEK KINGDOM!

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