Akira

"The future is not a straight line. It is filled with many crossroads. There must be a future that we can choose for ourselves." Katsuhiro Otomo's 'Akira' is THE animated movie and I don't usually get my mind blown this many times for such extended periods of time as this movie manages to do. It does it over and over and over again for its entire runtime. Firstly this feels really close to me because my father dedicated years of his life working for Canon so seeing their logo pop up rather religiously on Kameda's bike was really fucking cool and I love that, just made me think of him every time I saw it and that was pretty damn awesome to me. Also that Akira Slide is the most influential moments in 80’s cinema and I never realised how many times it has been remade in almost every motorcycle scene since 1988. Second of all the fact that for this film the incredible animators created over 50 new colour palettes to contribute to films monstrous 327 total is mind-blowing to me. It's just insane to even consider the level of love and craft that went into every single frame displayed on my screen. It was such an amazing watch with those final 45 minutes being among the greatest I have ever seen, the fact that the animation playing behind the credits was next level and I almost wanted for their not to be any just so I could purely focus on it's incredible nature should say all it needs to. The blindingness of the white at the end was such a cool touch and really added to the scale of what was being shown at the end. It's also one of those incredibly rare films where the technical brilliance never overshadows the story. Underneath all of the jaw-dropping visuals is a bleak, angry and surprisingly emotional tale about power, corruption, friendship and humanity's obsession with pushing itself beyond its own limits. Tetsuo's descent is absolutely horrifying to witness, made even more tragic by the fact that all he ever really wanted was to stop feeling weak. The body horror in those closing moments is genuinely some of the most disturbing imagery I've ever seen, but it's never there purely for shock value. Every grotesque transformation serves the story and reinforces the terrifying consequences of unchecked power. The soundtrack and the sound design is so brilliant and understated and immerses you so perfectly into this Neo-Tokyo the film has already got you invested in with it’s visuals, the sound just adds a whole new layer. When I hit play on this film I thought I knew what I was watching, what started out as a generic sci-fi anime with biker gangs very very quickly turned into a deep meditation on the effects of obsession, unchecked power and rampant violence. It deals with these adult themes in a manner that you could very well miss but with a switched on brain and half a functioning braincell you can really grasp some of the most elite handling of the most divisive themes in cinema. Greed, Obsession, Power and Progress and it does all four perfectly. Akira is one of those films that when the credits roll you question ‘How?’ How could somebody create something so brilliantly mindblowing and yet so woefully under seen that if I was to bring it up in casual conversation nobody would have any idea what I was on about? Every single second, every single frame feels so dangerously ambitious and impossible to create, yet somehow it pulls it all off with what appears to be relative ease. I would argue that even with modern advancements this film is still decades ahead of its time and still stands alone as THE benchmark for not only Japanese animated cinema but cinema in general. It is not only the greatest animated film ever, Full Stop but also one of the greatest pieces of media ever produced and spends two hours and five minutes reminding you why cinema is my favourite art form and one of the most important mediums ever. An absolutely mind-blowing experience that has genuinely rewired my brain once more.