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Amnesia 7
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Amnesia - Issue 07 (1991-11-23)(Eclipse).adf
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akira
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1989-05-09
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AKIRA - Animation For Adults ?
Last Saturday morning,(12/10/91),as part of the junior film festival,the
Light House cinema held a screening of the Japanese animated movie Akira.The
movie was two hours long and anything but junior.After the screening a short
discussion was held and it is from this and my own personal opinion that I
will attempt to review this movie.
Akira is based on the graphic novels,of which I haven't read.To try to
review this movie as a whole would be impossible and so I'll break it down
into it's main constituents,namely,animation,soundtrack and story.
The animation,in my opinion,was superb.Various comments were made about
it during the discussion.These ranged from one person who said that it was
no better than reading a graphic novel,to the numerous comparisons with
Disney.The animation was NOT in the traditional Disney style.It was crisper,
sharper and whilst maybe not as detailed,in an artistic sense,it appeared to
have undergone a greater thought and effort.The example that comes clearest
to my mind,is one scene where a psychic child screams.The grounds tear,cars
explode,but most impressively was the scene where all the glass in a
building smashes and falls to the ground.Imagine hunderds of individual
pieces of glass all fully animated,falling to the ground...WOW ! There were
other effects,like the strobing of the lights on the motorbikes as they
speed away.To me,this movie was the closest thing to a live action movie
I've ever seen.All the directorial styles of live action,appeared to have
been implemented,like odd camera angles,panning around a subject,closeups,
etc.I left this movie and when thinking about it,I kept thinking of it as I
would a live action movie.This is a difficult concept to put accross in the
blandness of the printed word,but suffice to say I was very impressed with
the animation.....stunning.
The soundtrack was very moviesque.A faintly Terminator II percussion done
in an oriental style accompanies the opening visions of the holocaust.To me
the music was perfectly suited to what was going on on the screen.When
cyberpunk meets orchestral and gets together to jam in the heart of Japan
you get....the Akira soundtrack,well maybe not but I thought so.Also the
haunting organ music as the devestation occurs is also perfect to the whole
visual/aural effect.Whilst not necessarily to do with the soundtrack,was the
English dubbing.This was the typical,gung-ho,Japanese/American cartoon style
seen in everything from turtles to battletech.of course there is no
substitute to watching a film in its natural language and the dubbing did
detract from the style a bit.It was surprisingly ambient for an animated
movie,but having the hero say..."Bitchin'"..made the whole thing slightly
silly.
Now for the hardest part of this review,hence my leaving it till the end.
The plot.Anyone who has read the graphic novels will have a better idea of
this than me,for it is here that the movie failed slightly.The first hour
dealt with a political view of the future,a la Judge Dredd,Bladerunner,Brazil
whilst introducing elements of the main story.This main story was to do with
a military to develop the psychic abilities of a group of four children,for
what reasons we're not told but presume as some sort of weapon.Due to the
experimentation,one of them dies,namely Akira.Ok,I'm going to try to explain
the main happenings of the movie,but if you get lost don't worry as I did.
There are biker gangs fighting duels on the streets,during one such fight
one of of the gang members,Tetsuo,(forgive the spelling),comes in contact
with one of the psychic children who was kidnapped by a member of the
revelutionary front,(my god I'm only realising now how complicated this plot
was),anyway the military come along and pick up the kid and Tetsuo.They then
start the psychic experiments on Tetsuo.Suffice to say Tetsuo goes nuts due
to his extreme powers and goes in search of Akira,not fully realising what
he/she/it is but knowing that it has something to do with his situation.
Tetsuo rips the city of Neo-Tokyo apart on his journey from the institue to
the site of Akiras hangout,which is a massive freezer/storage facility built
beneath the stadium that the city was building for the Olympic games.Are you
all still with me ??? Anyway Tetsuo makes it there and finds out that Akira
is just a few bits of body tissues in a couple of jars.....bummer.Well thats
how everyone in the cinema felt after this massive assualt on the city to
get there.Anyway the other psychic children turn up,Tetsuo goes totally out
of control,his body transforming into a big...big pink blob thingy.The
psychic children use there powers to reincarnate Akira from the body
tissues.Seemingly Akira was the most powerful of them all,and it turns into
pure energy and engulfs tetsu the other psychic children and well basically
the whole of Neo-Tokyo.Emmm thats it really,neo-Toyko is almost totally
destroyed only a few survivors.The idea being that the city was corrupt and
that it required this vast purging for a re-birth.
As you can see the plot got a little out of its depth,for a movie.But if
you stuck with it it was watchable,especially the first half which was
utterly excellent.There were two comments also made about the content,namely
the violence and the treatment of women.Akira is a violent movie.People get
the sides of their faces shot off,they get the crap beaten out of them,and
so on.Violence in animated movies will always be a personal thing but if
live action movies can have the Tom and Jerry slapstick violence,why can't
animated movies have Terminator violence,(allthough I reckon Akira was more
violent than Terminator II).There was one scene that one of the audience
found objectionable.A female character had her top ripped off and was
punched in the face.The viewer also thought that there were other scenes
that protrayed women in a very chauvinistic light.I can only say that ont of
the heros was actually a heroine,but more importantly Japan's culture treats
women as subservient,it is part of their culture,what we find objectionable
is not to another culture,and therefore we cannot condem something on the
basis of our own values.
To sum up Akira was the best way I spent a Saturday morning in a long
time,(then again the company was good).The animation was excellent as was
the soundtrack,the plot got a bit messy after an hour or so,and could have
been tidied up.It tried to cover too much.In this case a graphic novel is
better.I'm interested to see how the movie version of the Watchmen turns out
Anyway I recommend this movie to anyone with an interest in science fiction
or even in animation.It was a unique expierence and view of how a very
different culture sees the future aftre a holocaust.
ZeD/Eclipse....
Thanks to Bryan Duggan for telling that this movie was on,otherwise I would
have missed it.