| EDITOR'S
NOTE: Aron Rave is Gyeah.com's honorary Canadian. Therefore, his primary
language is NOT English. Enjoy! This last week, I had the chance to see one of the classic Japanese
manga/anime, Akira. If you aren’t familiar with anime, just keep in mind that when it
was first released in 1988, it was a major improvement in this domain. The version I saw
was the digital re-mastered one, so I don’t know what it looked like in 1988, but
this version was pretty. It became extremely popular in Japan, and after a few years,
popular in North America also.
Here’s the somewhat complex story:
We are in Neo-Tokyo, 30 years after World War III. Tokyo was nuked and the effect was
terrible. The town is now infected by gangs and terrorists, and the army and police must
(must?) use extreme violence against rioters. Kaneda, the “leader” of a
motorcycle gang, is in a war against another gang dressing like clown. During one of these
on-road extreme fights, Tetsuo, Kaneda long time friend, get hurts and his captured by the
army. As they experiment on him to try to find the perfect human being, he escapes and
start wreaking havoc in Neo-Tokyo with his new psychic powers, as the rebels thinks
he’s Akira, the man who they believe will free them from their government. But
Tetsuo’s powers are uncontrollable, and sooner or later, the entire earth will suffer
from his childhood’s lack of respect. Who can stop him? Other psychic kids? Kaneda?
Or… Akira?
As you see, the plot is kind of hard to follow, but very entertaining. We get to know
several others characters, and they all have important roles. There are three major
reasons why Akira was such a success. First, this movie is EXTREMELY violent. A rioter get
shot in the face with a tear-gas bomb at 1 meter away, a dying man (protecting a child
behind his back) gets shoot like 25 times by the cops, Tatsuo makes a guard explode with
little effort, etc. Second, this anime doesn’t only talk about super-heroes and
super-villains, it talks about a dying society which is menaced both by the rich
government who tries to control everything and by the poor habitants, ready to make
everything explode for their liberty (example: some kamikaze tries to make a grenade blow
right in the police station, making everybody piss in their pants. When they realize the
grenade didn’t work, both the police and the criminals beat him to death. Very funny
ish). Third, you know how Tatsuo feels. Come on, if you woke up with super psychic powers
one day, would you like to impress the “cool guy that everybody likes”? If Tokyo
wanted YOU as their savior, wouldn’t you use your power to raise some hell? I know I
would.
I really don’t want to talk about the end, except that I didn’t really
understand what the hell they were talking about. I asked some guy who saw it 3 times, and
he didn’t know either. But who cares, it was cool enough. The movie was awesome, the
effects, even if it’s not Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, are good, the story-line
makes me wet myself. I don’t know where you can find Akira, but find it, buy it,
enjoy it.
Rating:  out of four. |
