Film (color, sound) 124 min. Japan
“Anyone unfamiliar with Japanese anime should start with Akira. Adapted by Katsuhiro Otomo from his wildly popular manga (a serialized comic strip) and billed as the most expensive animated feature to come out of Japan, Akira was described by one critic as “Blade Runner meets Speed Racer,” with the stress on hyperkinetic, ultraviolent action. The story begins on June 16, 1988. Scarcely forty-five years after the first atomic bombs leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World War III is in full swing and Tokyo is obliterated in a nuclear attack. Out of the ashes a new Tokyo is built, and by 2019 all is right and well again in the naked city, for Neo-Tokyo has become a dystopic metropolis under threat of martial law, where students are rioting and swat teams are clubbing them, urban terrorists are blowing up entire neighborhoods, rival teen motorcycle gangs are waging turf wars, and the government is cooking up a crackpot scheme to rid the world of mere mortals by replacing them with superhumans through a series of secret brain experiments."
“Anyone unfamiliar with Japanese anime should start with Akira. Adapted by Katsuhiro Otomo from his wildly popular manga (a serialized comic strip) and billed as the most expensive animated feature to come out of Japan, Akira was described by one critic as “Blade Runner meets Speed Racer,” with the stress on hyperkinetic, ultraviolent action. The story begins on June 16, 1988. Scarcely forty-five years after the first atomic bombs leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World War III is in full swing and Tokyo is obliterated in a nuclear attack. Out of the ashes a new Tokyo is built, and by 2019 all is right and well again in the naked city, for Neo-Tokyo has become a dystopic metropolis under threat of martial law, where students are rioting and swat teams are clubbing them, urban terrorists are blowing up entire neighborhoods, rival teen motorcycle gangs are waging turf wars, and the government is cooking up a crackpot scheme to rid the world of mere mortals by replacing them with superhumans through a series of secret brain experiments."
The Museum of Modern Art, The Imaginary War: Exhibition Features Films From A Diversity of Genres About Wars That Never Took Place. Press Release, Sep. 2000.
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