4/4  Controversial Anime classic.
This ambitious, multi-million dollar animated adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's best-selling graphic novel series is spectacular, both on a technical and visceral level. A lot of effort was obviously put into making the animation as fluid an... (read full)

3/4  A strong B+ movie overall
In July, 1988, the city of Tokyo, Japan, was destroyed by a nuclear explosion. The blast leads to World War III a few hours after.

31 years later, gangs are terrorizing Neo-Tokyo, a city on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay near the ol... (read full)

4/4  Must See for Any Anime Fans
This movie helped to break mainstream Japanese anime to the western world. It’s a classic, and an amazing piece of film in its own right. Be warned, however, the plot is confusing and difficult to follow - especially for someone watching... (read full)

3.5/4  Akira Quick Review
In my opinion the definitive anime classic. Better than Spirited Away I think.

3/4  Akira Quick Review
a classic in science fiction. a classic in animation. a classic in anime. a classic in japanese culture.

3.5/4  Akira Quick Review
Among the best movies ever made animated or otherwise.

3/4  Akira Quick Review
This is the only anime movie I've ever seen, and I don't want to see another one, this is the best.

4/4  Akira Quick Review
This is one of the best anime movie of all time. Great plot and action. Animated violence with some nudity thrown in, you can't beat that!

4/4  Akira Quick Review
This is the seminal anime classic - the one that proved that cartoons aren't just for kids with a very adult story and some truly amazing visual effects. The story is not the easiest to follow, but that's OK, you'll want to watch it again.

5/5 It all started here for me.
  by Lucas J Diercouff (Schweinfurt, Germany)
This film and Ninja Scroll really were the first Anime that truly impressed me. It was amazing. If it hadn't been for them... then I don't know if I ever would have been a fan of Anime at all.

1/5 Complete WASTE!!!! AVOID....
  by Candice Clausing (Medina, OH United States)
The debate over which English dub rages on even still. Outside of the original Japanese voices, the Streamline VHS dub is by far the greatest. Not only because it was first and has nostalgic quality, but the actors were just plain better.
From what I gather, the BluRay release is the Pioneer (horrible) version. BUT it is sampled at the highest quality sound ANY BluRay has so far! But who cares, it's just TrueHD sound of a terrible dubbing job.
And what's worse is there is the THIRD English dub everyone overlooks! The Sony PSP had a UMD release of Akira that had an entirely NEW English dub that was REALLY good!
Why are two great dubs overlooked in favor of Pioneer's disaster of a job?! Because it is sampled higher? I hope there is a better reason.

I still have my Streamilne VHS copy and I'll take that ANY day over this atrocity.

And why couldn't we have ALL dubs as options?! It's a BluRay! It's not like we don't have the room! Make everyone happy!

Until I get my Streamline dub, NO SALE!

1/5 Atrocious screen adaptation of a manga masterpiece
  by NYC_Babe (Brooklyn, NY USA)
For years I'd heard all kinds of accolades heaped on this film, running the gamut of "greatest anime ever made" to "film that changed everything." So before I even watched it, I sat down and read all 6 volumes of the original manga from cover to cover, starting from the opening sequence of Tokyo being blown up in Volume 1 to the very last scene of Volume 6.

And boy, am I glad I did, because this is probably one of the most brilliantly written and visually compelling graphic novels ever created. I know that sounds totally "fanboy", but I don't mean to be. The manga truly is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. That's not to say it's not without flaws, but that it's as close as you can get to perfection.

So imagine my shock when I finally saw this film, the so-called "best anime ever made", the one so many anime fans have been raving about. As I watched this film, I didn't feel awe and amazement, but something decidedly different-- the sense that this was probably one of the WORST adaptations of a literary work ever in the history of cinema.

Many people have defended the poor adaptation with the excuse that "there wasn't enough time to put everything from the book into the movie." But this is a straw man. The anime is not poorly adapted because it didn't cram everything from the manga into the movie. It's poorly adapted, because Otomo himself changed his original story so dramatically that it doesn't even come close to resembling the manga in any real sense. It's almost as if the screenplay had been adapted by someone who'd never read Akira a day in his life.

If you think I'm exaggerating, here are some very specific examples of how badly Otomo eviscerated his own work in adapting it to screen:

1) A majority of the events in this film never happened in the manga, and very few of the events in the manga occur in the film. Of the few incidents from the manga included in the film, they happen in a completely different context than in the manga.

2) Characters who died tragically in the book either live in the movie or die in a completely different way than they did in the manga, usually in a manner that is far less dramatic or moving

3) Kaori, the street urchin who Tetsuo's henchman randomly picked off the streets to be his slave, is his girlfriend in the movie

4) Kiyoko, Masaru, and Takahashi are vicious brats who aggressively attack Tetsuo, when it was Tetsuo who was the aggressor

5) Chiyoko doesn't exist, and neither do any of the characters associated with Miyako or Akira's "kingdom" after the destruction of Neo-Tokyo. Nezu, Ryu and other side characters are just thrown in for the hell of it. The scientists in Volume 6 don't exist, and the cigarette fiend makes a small cameo.

6) Remember how much the drugs were a part of the story? They don't figure here at all, except, once again, as a mere cameo (Kaneda wears a pill on his jacket; Tetsuo tries to score drugs off a barkeep)

The most egregious cases in which Otomo dramatically altered his story:

1) He decided he wanted to make "Kiyoko" the "wise sage" in the movie, so he destroyed Lady Miyako's character. In the book, she was the philosophical heart of the story, a central figure very similar to the Oracle character in the Matrix. In the movie, she's transformed from wise and caring sage to crazed lunatic ranting that Neo-Tokyo needs to "burn" to be purified. So whereas in the book she was a protector of people and wise sage, in the movie she's a religious nut who wants them to burn in a "rapture-like" blaze. To add insult to injury, she's given a man's voice to make her seem more crazy, and she's casually killed off along with some anonymous city rabble after two brief cameos that couldn't have lasted more than 20 seconds each.

2) And Akira? I'm not going to spoil it for you, but if you see what "Akira" is in this movie, you'll literally shake your head wondering what in the hell Otomo was thinking. The change defies logic, because in changing him so radically he essentially rewrote his own story beyond recognizability.

All of these dramatic changes would be forgivable if this new version of Akira was entertaining and well written in its own right. Unfortunately, I can't say that it is. I found it painfully boring and convoluted. Not only was the pace plodding, the screenplay was muddled to the point where even I-- who'd read the story-- had trouble following what was going on. So it definitely wasn't a compelling movie for me.

I know I'm gonna tick off a lot of hardcore fans of this movie, but I'm sorry-- as a huge fan of the manga, it's impossible for me to consider it as "the best ever" when it did such a terrible job of adapting the original story to screen. Watch it for the animation if you will, or the nostalgia of having viewed this "revolutionary anime" from when it first came out, or out of curiosity to see what the fuss is all about. But if you're a fan of the manga, I would seriously pass. It's definitely not the adaptation you hoped and dreamed for; if anything, it's the stuff that nightmares are made of.

4/5 Outstanding animation, disjointed story
  by H. Jin (Melbourne, Australia)
It's easy to see why 'Akira' became one of the first anime to be really successful in the West. The dark, apocalyptic storyline was very different from the usual Japanese magical girls and fighting robots, and there was plenty of flashy eye-candy in the form of outstanding animation (for its time). However, while the style is great, the substance is lacking.

The fundamental problem with 'Akira' is that it is a 2 hour movie cobbled together from a very long manga, meaning the story is compressed and rushed almost to the point of incomprehensibility. There are so many important plot points that are skimmed over or left out altogether, and the pacing of the movie is poor. Most of the important plot points (involving Tetsuo) are dispensed with reasonably early in the film, and the entire second half is given over to Tetsuo's rampage and destruction. They should have cut this down and spent more time fleshing out the story.

Another problem is the characterisation. Since the main characters are mostly biker punks or ruthless military/medical men, there isn't exactly much room for depth and sensitivity. In fact, it's pretty two-dimensional to be honest. Kaneda is a sort of anti-hero, and he does at least show some development and growing maturity over the course of the film. Kei is probably the closest thing to a true heroine, while The Colonel has some humanity to him despite being the main antagonist.

Sure, given the flashy and action-packed nature of this anime, you can just switch off your brain and enjoy the eye-candy. On a very basic "I'm mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore!" level, the film is easy enough to follow. But to truly understand 'Akira' requires the utmost concentration, and almost certainly multiple viewings. This is the issue with the film: blood and guts action fans will probably not want to make such an in-depth investment, but the more intellectual fans might be put off by the pointless violence and brutality.

From the viewpoint of 2009, 'Akira' is arguably more important for its influence than for what it actually is. However, its historical importance is enormous, and despite its major flaws remains essential for every anime fan.

1/5 I guess I'm in the minority...
  by Ana Mardoll (United States)
Kaneda / 013023153899

It's always strange to come away from a movie disliking it and then see a plethora of reviews hailing it as the best thing ever. Inevitably doubt sets in, and I find myself wondering what it is that all those other people saw in this movie that I did not, but I just didn't like "Akira" at all.

Where do I start? I guess my biggest problem with this film is the overwhelming sense that important details (such as character motivation) have been blithely omitted on the grounds that "deep" or "meaningful" movies don't need such petty concerns. Tetsuo in particular seems driven by no motivation other than malevolent evil and madness and feels like a terrible rendition of a DBZ villain - he only seems interested in fighting for the fight itself, in order to be the most powerful one left standing. That kind of motivation is fine enough in a Bond shoot-em-up, but I expect more from a movie that's supposed to make me think. Kaneda, too, seems motivated not from character development or environment constraints, but merely because the movie *requires* him to behave in certain ways. It seems unreasonable that Kaneda would practically throw away his life trying to kill Tetsuo - or rather, it seems not at all unreasonable for a *movie character* to do such a thing, but a "realistic" character would seemingly take the first chance to make himself scarce... or at least consider it. Kaneda seems not even to acknowledge the possibility.

Other questions abound. Why do the strange children look so old and green, and why do they attack Tetsuo, and why do they attack him with teddy bears bleeding milk from their eye sockets? Why are all the biker kids almost completely interchangeable, dialogue and all? Why is the government willing to pour money into a super-secret super-kid project, and then only hire a handful of guards and one scientist to guard these expensively godly goblins? Why, for the love of all that is sane, are all heroines required by law to fall for the hero who is rude, largely foolish and ineffectual, and has a bad tendency to flash the words "author insert character" above his head in green neon letters?

As for the touted depth and complexity behind this movie, I was blown away with the "explanation" (courtesy of the heroine) that ants are born with less power than humans, but what if an ant was accidentally born with the power of a human? What a huge mix-up that would be! Only, I wasn't aware that it was "power" that made us humans so special - I thought it was things like arms and legs and opposable thumbs and a brain that is somewhat larger and more complicated than that of an ant. I'm told the whole thing is supposed to be a Buddhist analogy for something, but as a method to drive the story and explain the character motivation, it doesn't do the job, in my personal opinion.

I can't help but also note that for a "deep" and "meaningful" movie, this film seems to enjoy itself far too much with the rapant gore and female frontal nudity. One female character - a sweet biker groupie whose boyfriend treats her with complete contempt - seems to exist *solely* for the purpose of sexual violence being played out upon her (twice), while the heroes helplessly watch - there's a tangible feeling of voyeurism and sadism overlaying her character that made me uncomfortable, to say the least.

After reading some of the reviews, I suspect that "Akira" might be one of those movies that you have to be part of the 'in-group' in order to properly understand and appreciate it. And that's fine - it's not my place to start demanding explanations, character motivation, development, or basic plot elements over special effects and in-group backstory. But if you're not already a part of the Akira fan base, and are an outsider like me, then be aware that you may end up as frustrated and irritated by this movie as I was. Then again, Roger Ebert apparently liked this film well enough, so it's entirely possible that I'm just in the minority.