Watch Akira Online - Full Movies, Trailers & Reviews

Akira (?) is a 1988 Japanese animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his manga of the same name. The film is set in a neon-lit Tokyo in 2019. While most of the character designs and basic settings were adapted from the original 2,182-page manga epic, the restructured plot o..More

Akira (?) is a 1988 Japanese animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his manga of the same name. The film is set in a neon-lit Tokyo in 2019. While most of the character designs and basic settings were adapted from the original 2,182-page manga epic, the restructured plot of the movie differs considerably from the print version, pruning much of the last half of the book. Akira is regarded by many critics as a landmark anime film, one that influenced much of the art in the anime world that followed its release. Akira is regarded by critics as one of the greatest animated films ever made.
The movie led the way for growing the popularity of anime in the West. Akira is considered a forerunner of the second wave of anime fandom that began in the early 1990s. One of the reasons for the movie's success was the quality of its animation. At the time, most anime was notorious for cutting production corners with limited motion, such as having only the characters' mouths move while their faces remained static. Akira broke from this trend with detailed scenes, lip-synched dialoguea first for an anime production and super-fluid motion as realized in the film's more than 160,000 animation cels. Notable themes in the film include youth culture, cyberpunk, delinquency, psychic awareness, social unrest, the world's reaction toward a nuclear holocaust and Japan's post-war economic revival. The film also explores a number of psychological and philosophical themes, such as the nature of corruption, the will to power, and the growth from childhood to maturity both in individuals and the human race itself. Elements of Buddhist symbolism are also present in the film. Less