Akira
Theatrical release poster
Japanese name
Kanji	アキラ
Directed by	Katsuhiro Otomo
Screenplay by	Katsuhiro Otomo Izo Hashimoto
Based on	Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
Produced by	Ryōhei Suzuki Shunzō Katō
Starring	Mitsuo Iwata Nozomu Sasaki Mami Koyama Taro Ishida Tesshō Genda Mizuho Suzuki Tatsuhiko Nakamura Fukue Itō Kazuhiro Shindō
Cinematography	Katsuji Misawa
Edited by	Takeshi Seyama
Music by	Shōji Yamashiro
Production company	Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co., Ltd.
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	July 16, 1988 (1988-07-16)
Running time	124 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Budget	¥700 million / $5.7 million[1][2]
Box office	$49 million[3]

Akira (Japanese: アキラ) is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film^[4] directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo's 1982 manga of the same name. Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires incredible telekinetic abilities after a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo.

While most of the character designs and settings were adapted from the manga, the plot differs considerably and does not include much of the last half of the manga, which continued publication for two years after the film's release. The soundtrack, which draws heavily from traditional Indonesian gamelan as well as Japanese noh music, was composed by Shōji Yamashiro and performed by Geinoh Yamashirogumi.

Akira was released in Japan on July 16, 1988, by Toho; it was released the following year in the United States by Streamline Pictures. It garnered an international cult following after various theatrical and VHS releases, eventually earning over $80 million worldwide in home video sales.^[5] It has been cited as a masterpiece and is widely regarded by audiences and critics as one of the greatest films ever made, especially in the field of animation and in the action and science fiction genres. It is regarded as a landmark in Japanese animation, and the most influential and iconic anime film ever made.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} It is also a pivotal film in the cyberpunk genre, particularly the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre,^[11] as well as adult animation.^[12] The film had a significant effect on popular culture worldwide, paving the way for the growth of anime and Japanese popular culture in the Western world as well as influencing numerous works in animation, comics, film, music, television, and video games.^[3][12][13]

Plot

In 2019, following a world war triggered by the sudden destruction of Tokyo on July 16, 1988, Neo-Tokyo is plagued by corruption, anti-government protests, terrorism, and gang violence. During a violent rally, the hot-headed Shōtarō Kaneda leads his vigilante bōsōzoku gang, the Capsules, against the rival Clown gang. Kaneda's best friend, Tetsuo Shima, inadvertently crashes his motorcycle into Takashi, an esper who escaped from a government laboratory with the aid of a resistance organization. Assisted by fellow esper Masaru, Japan Self-Defense Forces Colonel Shikishima recaptures Takashi, has Tetsuo hospitalized, and arrests the Capsules. While being interrogated by the police, Kaneda meets Kei, an activist within the resistance movement, and tricks the authorities into releasing her with his gang.

At a secret government facility, Shikishima and his head of research, Doctor Ōnishi, discover that Tetsuo possesses powerful psychic abilities similar to Akira, the esper responsible for Tokyo's 1988 destruction. Esper Kiyoko forewarns Shikishima of Neo-Tokyo's impending destruction, but the city's parliament dismisses Shikishima's concerns, leading him to consider killing Tetsuo to prevent another cataclysm. Meanwhile, Tetsuo escapes from the hospital, steals Kaneda's motorcycle, and tries to flee Neo-Tokyo with his girlfriend Kaori, but the Clowns ambush them. The Capsules rescue Tetsuo and Kaori, but Tetsuo suffers intense headaches and hallucinations and is re-hospitalized.

Overhearing their plan to rescue Tetsuo and the other espers, Kaneda joins Kei's resistance cell. At the hospital, the espers try killing Tetsuo via hallucinations, but the attempt is thwarted. A frustrated Tetsuo searches for them, killing any orderlies and militiamen blocking his path. The resistance group infiltrates the hospital, and Kiyoko draws Kei and Kaneda into Shikishima and the espers' futile attempts to stop Tetsuo. Kiyoko tells Tetsuo that Akira, located in cryonic storage beneath the Olympic Stadium's construction site, could help Tetsuo with his powers. After rejecting everyone around him, especially Kaneda, Tetsuo flees the hospital to hunt for Akira.

Using Kei as a medium to stop Tetsuo, Kiyoko breaks her and Kaneda out of military custody. Shikishima stages a coup d'état against Neo-Tokyo's government and directs its military forces to destroy Tetsuo at any cost. At the Capsules' former hangout, Harukiya Bar, Tetsuo confronts gangmates Yamagata and Kai over Kaneda's bike and kills Yamagata after his protest. Kai relays the news to Kaneda, who vows to avenge his friend, while Takashi brings Kei away. Mistaken for Akira by cultists, Tetsuo rampages through Neo-Tokyo, arriving at Akira's cryogenic storage dewar under the stadium. Kei fights Tetsuo, but he defeats her and exhumes Akira, only to find his remains sealed in jars for scientific research.

Kaneda fights Tetsuo with a laser rifle, and Shikishima fires an orbital weapon at him. While the latter destroys his arm, neither is able to stop him. Shikishima and Kaori approach the stadium, where Tetsuo, now with a robotic arm, is in great pain and losing control over his powers. Kaori tries restraining Tetsuo while Shikishima unsuccessfully offers to heal his injuries and help control his abilities. Kaneda again fights Tetsuo, who, weakened from the missing arm, mutates into a gigantic mass of flesh, engulfing Kaneda and killing Kaori. The espers revive Akira to stop the growing mass. Reuniting with his friends, Akira creates a singularity, drawing Tetsuo and Kaneda into another dimension. The espers teleport Shikishima to a safe distance as the singularity destroys Neo-Tokyo in a mirror of Tokyo's previous destruction, and they agree to rescue Kaneda, knowing they will not return to this dimension as a result.

In the singularity, Kaneda experiences Tetsuo and the espers' childhoods, including his and Tetsuo's friendship and the espers' psychic training before Tokyo's destruction. The espers return Kaneda to Neo-Tokyo, informing him that Akira will take Tetsuo to safety and that Kei is developing psychic powers. Ōnishi witnesses the birth of a universe but is killed in his lab's destruction. After consuming most of Neo-Tokyo, the singularity disappears, and water floods the crater left in its place. Mourning Tetsuo's loss, Kaneda discovers that Kei and Kai have survived, and they ride off into the ruins while Shikishima watches the sunrise. At an unspecified plane of reality, Tetsuo introduces himself and triggers the creation of a universe, finally transcending the limitations of human existence.

Voice cast

Cam Clarke and Johnny Yong Bosch (top to bottom) voiced Kaneda in the first and second English dub of the film, respectively.

Production

While working on the Akira manga, Katsuhiro Otomo did not intend to adapt the series; however, he became "very intrigued" when the offer to develop his work for the screen was put before him.^[18] He agreed to an anime film adaptation of the series on the grounds that he retained creative control of the project – this insistence was based on his experiences working on Harmagedon.^[14] The Akira Committee was the name given to a partnership of several major Japanese entertainment companies brought together to realize production of an Akira film. The group's assembly was necessitated by the unconventionally high starting budget of around ¥500,000,000, intended to achieve the desired epic standard equal to Otomo's over 2,000-page manga tale. The committee consisted of Kodansha, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Bandai, Hakuhodo, Toho, LaserDisc Corporation and Sumitomo Corporation who all forwarded money and promotion towards the film. The animation for the film was provided for by animation producers, Tokyo Movie Shinsha (now TMS Entertainment).^[19]

Akira had pre-scored dialogue (wherein the dialogue is recorded before the film starts production and the movements of the characters' lips are animated to match it;^[20] a first for an anime production and extremely unusual even today for an anime,^[21] although the voice actors did perform with the aid of animatics),^[14] and super-fluid motion as realized in the film's more than 160,000 animation cels.^[19] Computer-generated imagery was also used in the film (created by High-Tech Lab. Japan Inc. and the cooperative companies for computer graphics, Sumisho Electronic Systems, Inc. and Wavefront Technologies), primarily to animate the pattern indicator used by Doctor Ōnishi, but it was additionally used to plot the paths of falling objects, model parallax effects on backgrounds, and tweak lighting and lens flares.^[14] Unlike its live-action predecessors, Akira also had the budget to show a fully realized futuristic Tokyo.^[22] The animation was photographed onto 65mm film, using an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

The film's production budget was ¥700 million^[1] ($5.5 million),^[2] with the combined production and advertising budget believed to be reaching ¥1.1 billion ($9 million).^[1][23] Some sources claim it to the most expensive anime film at the time of release,^[22][23] but this claim is disputed by Crunchyroll writer Daryl Harding.^[24]

The teaser trailer for Akira was released in 1987. The film's main production was completed in 1987, with sound recording and mixing performed in early 1988. It was released in 1988, two years before the manga officially ended in 1990. Otomo is claimed to have filled 2,000 pages of notebooks, containing various ideas and character designs for the film, but the final storyboard consisted of a trimmed-down 738 pages.^[14] He had great difficulty completing the manga; Otomo has stated that the inspiration for its conclusion arose from a conversation that he had with Alejandro Jodorowsky.^[25] He later recalled that the film project had to begin with the writing of an ending that would bring suitable closure to major characters, storylines, and themes without being extraordinarily lengthy, so that he could know in reverse order which manga elements would make the cut into the anime and thus suitably resolve the manga's various elements into a lean, two-hour story.^[26] Otomo has called making the film before finishing the manga "the worst possible idea".^[27] Although he came to like having two similar but different versions of the same story, he still felt too much of the original was cut out of the film.^[27]

Otomo is a big fan of Tetsujin 28-go. As a result, his naming conventions match the characters featured in Tetsujin 28-go: Kaneda shares his name with the protagonist of Tetsujin 28-go; Colonel Shikishima shares his name with Professor Shikishima of Tetsujin 28-go, while Tetsuo is named after Shikishima's son Tetsuo Shikishima; Akira's Ryūsaku is named after Ryūsaku Murasame. In addition, Takashi has a "26" tattooed on his hand which closely resembles the font used in Tetsujin 28-go. The namesake of the series, Akira, is the 28th in a line of psychics that the government has developed, the same number as Tetsujin-28.^[26]

One of the film's key animators was Makiko Futaki; she went on to become a lead animator for Studio Ghibli films such as Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004), before passing away in 2016.^[28] Another key animator who worked on Akira was former Shin-Ei animator Yoshiji Kigami; he animated several entire scenes in Akira, such as the action scene in the sewers. He later joined Kyoto Animation.^[29]

Releases

Box office

Akira was released by Toho on July 16, 1988. At the Japanese box office, it was the sixth highest-grossing Japanese film of the year, earning a distribution income (distributor rentals) of ¥750 million in 1988.^[30] This made it a moderate success at the Japanese box office.^[51] By 2000, the film had earned a Japanese distribution rental income of ¥800 million.^[32] The film's 4K remaster received a limited Japanese IMAX re-release in May 2020.^[52]

English releases

Electric Media produced an English dub of the film in 1989 that was written by L. Michael Haller and directed by Sheldon Renan and Wally Burr.^{[53][54][55][56]} The English version saw limited release by Streamline Pictures in North American theaters on December 25, 1989, and grossed about $2.2 million in the United States.^[36][57][58] Although Streamline was not involved in its production, this version became known as the "Streamline dub".

After Pioneer Entertainment acquired the rights to the film, a new English dub was produced by Animaze and directed by Kevin Seymour in 2001 for the DVD release to obtain THX certification.^{[59][60][61][62]} Pioneer re-released the film with the new dub in select theaters from March through December 2001, making it the 20th digital cinema release in North America.^[63] The restored 4K version was shown in North American movie theaters on September 24, 2020, and for multiple days in select IMAX auditoriums and other cinemas worldwide.^[64][65]

In the United Kingdom, Akira was theatrically released by Island Visual Arts on January 25, 1991.^[66] It debuted at number three on the UK box office charts, grossing £439,345 in its opening weekend. The film was fourth place the following week, was in the top ten for four weeks, and in the top 12 for seven weeks, grossing £878,695 by early March 1991.^[36] It was re-released on July 13, 2013, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film, and again on September 21, 2016. The 4K and IMAX re-release in October 2020 debuted at number three on the UK box office charts, grossing £201,124 in its opening weekend.^[36]

Home media

The Streamline dub was first released to VHS through Streamline's Video Comics label in May 1991 and received wider distribution from Orion Home Video in September 1993. Orion also distributed the original Japanese version with English subtitles on VHS, making Akira one of Streamline's few titles to have a Japanese audio release. The Criterion Collection released a LaserDisc with the Streamline dub and Japanese audio in 1992, which was the company's first animated release and its only until Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2014.^[67][68][69]

Pioneer released a restored version to home media in 2001. The release featured a single- and two-disc DVD set with the second English dub and Japanese audio, along with VHS versions of these audio tracks. It was one of the few releases from Pioneer to feature THX-certified audio and video. Although Pioneer intended to have the Streamline dub in the release, it was excluded to maintain the THX certification.^[59][60]

In the United Kingdom, Akira was first released on VHS by Island World Communications in 1991.^[70] By 1993, the film had sold 60,000 tapes in the United Kingdom,^[70] 100,000 tapes in Europe,^[32] and 100,000 tapes in the United States.^[58] The success of this release led to the creation of Manga Entertainment, who later assumed distribution. Manga released a two-disc DVD set in 2004, which featured the restored version with the Japanese audio and Pioneer dub on the first disc and a VHS transfer of the Streamline dub on the second.

A Blu-ray disc edition of the film was released on February 24, 2009, in North America by Bandai Entertainment under the Honneamise label.^[71][72] A Blu-ray edition of Akira was subsequently released in Australia by Madman Entertainment under exclusive license from Manga and Kodansha.^[73] Madman has recently released a DVD/Blu-ray combo which license is separate from the standalone Blu-ray release because instead of the DVD version being the Manga Video UK version, it uses Madman/Manga's 2001 Special Edition DVD release which is licensed from Manga UK. The Blu-ray release is the first use the format's highest audio sampling rate (Dolby TrueHD 5.1 at 192 kHz for the Japanese audio track) and first to use the hypersonic effect (only available on the Japanese track and on high-end audio systems). Beyond Japanese with English subtitles, the Blu-ray also features the 2001 Pioneer/Animaze English dub (TrueHD 5.1 at 48 kHz). The DVD version was again released in 2012 by Bandai Entertainment. The film was licensed again by Funimation following Bandai Entertainment's closure shortly after its DVD release.^[74] The Funimation release includes both English dubs, Streamline in stereo and Pioneer in 5.1 surround (both TrueHD at 96 kHz).^[75] Funimation released a 25th anniversary Blu-ray/DVD combo and separate DVD release on November 12, 2013, which features the TrueHD Japanese audio and both English dubs (TrueHD at 96 kHz on Blu-ray).^[76] Best Buy released a limited edition exclusive Blu-ray Steelbook the same year.

On April 24, 2020, an Ultra HD Blu-ray version was released in Japan by Bandai Namco Entertainment, featuring a 4K HDR remaster sourced from the original 35 mm film print, as well as the 192 kHz audio transfer created for prior Blu-ray releases.^[77] The same remaster was released by FUNimation on December 22, 2020.^[78]

As of 2014^[update], the film has earned over $80 million in worldwide home video sales.^[70] In the United States, it was the seventh best-selling DVD anime film of all time as of 2006^[update][79] and grossed $2,086,180 in Blu-ray sales as of January 2022^[update].^[80] In the United Kingdom, it was 2020's ninth best-selling foreign language film on physical home video formats and the year's second best-selling Japanese film (below the anime Weathering with You).^[81]

Television

The Streamline dub aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in the 1990s during the week-long anime events and Saturday Anime block. The Pioneer dub aired twice on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block, once on December 7, 2013,^[82] with a rating of TV-MA-V, and again on December 20, 2014, both times with explicit language and nudity censored. It has aired numerous times on Australian FTA station SBS.^[83] In the United Kingdom, the film aired several times on BBC Two between 1994 and 1997.^[84] Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Akira_(1988_film)
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