Akira: The Pressure Cooker of Neo-Tokyo

Film review contains spoilers

---

On July 16, 1988, a blinding flash of energy erases Tokyo, triggering World War III. Thirty-one years later, Neo-Tokyo (2019) stands as a staggering monument to human hubris, a gleaming cyberpunk megalopolis built over Tokyo Bay, pulsing with neon light while rotting from the inside out.

The story does not start in the pristine boardrooms of politicians. It starts on the asphalt.

We follow Shotaro Kaneda and his bosozoku bike gang, the Capsules, as they tear through the ruined highways of Old Tokyo, trading chain blows and pipe strikes with the rival Clowns syndicate. Among them is Tetsuo Shima - younger, insecure, desperate to prove he does not need Kaneda's protection, and completely unaware that he is about to collide headfirst with a government military secret.

When Tetsuo's bike slams into Takashi (#27), a runaway Esper child with the face of an old man, the impact forcibly unlocks Tetsuo's dormant psionic potential. What follows is not a traditional superhero awakening. It is a terrifying, uncontrollable descent into godhood.

Open the Akira film page?

Technical Triumph: The 160,000-Frame Miracle

To understand why Akira feels alive in a way modern digital animation rarely achieves, you have to look at how director Katsuhiro Otomo broke the industry to make it.

Pre-recorded dialogue

Unlike standard anime of the era, where animation was drawn first and voice actors lip-synced later, Akira pre-recorded every line of dialogue, allowing animators to match lip movements to realistic facial muscle physics.

Cell density and fluid motion

Pushing over 160,000 individual hand-drawn animation cels (over double the industry standard), the film achieves a fluid, heavy kinetic realism. Tail-light trails smear across dark highways, smoke billows with physical weight, and glass shatters with microscopic precision.

The hypnotic score

Geinoh Yamashirogumi's score eschews traditional synth-wave tropes for a primal mix of Indonesian gamelan, traditional Japanese bamboo flutes (shakuhachi), and rhythmic, gasping human choral chants that make the film feel less like a sci-fi thriller and more like an ancient ritual.

The Core Conflict: Inferiority, Power, and Flesh

Stripped of the manga's massive political subplots, the 1988 film turns into a hyper-dense psychological pressure cooker. The tragedy of Akira is fundamentally a story about unearned power thrust upon a deeply broken ego. Tetsuo is not inherently evil. He is an orphaned teenager who spent his entire life living in the shadow of his cooler, older friend. When given godlike power, he does not use it to save the world or even rule it; he uses it to strike back at everyone who ever made him feel small.

When his body can no longer contain the surging psionic energy inside the Olympic Stadium, his power manifests physically: his arm and torso mutate into a terrifying mass of visceral flesh, mechanical cables, and organic sludge. It is one of the most iconic horror sequences in cinema history, a literal embodiment of a teenager collapsing under the weight of his own monstrous insecurity.

The Verdict: Archival Perfection

• Animation quality - 10 / 10. Unmatched hand-drawn fluid mechanics and lighting physics.
• Pacing and tone -9.5 / 10. Relentless cyberpunk pressure cooker from street chase to cosmic rebirth.
• Soundtrack - 10 / 10. Geinoh Yamashirogumi's score remains singular and haunting.
• Legacy impact -Infinite. Influenced everything from The Matrix and Stranger Things to modern mecha design.

For me, Akira is a 10 out of 10: not just a classic film, but a cultural monument.

It asks the viewer to sit with the horror of human evolution, the corruption of societal institutions, and the enduring bond of two brothers on a highway at the end of the world.

Reviewing

Akira

1988 · TMS Entertainment

View anime detail →