23/1001: Akira

Released 1988
Japanese, animation
color
Directed by Katsuhiro Ohtomo
Starring voice talents of Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki
(watched via scratchy old poorly dubbed VHS originally and later on awesome special edition remastered subtitled DVD)

The Plot Basically Breaks Down Like This:
There are these biker kids running amok in crappy future Tokyo where a nuclear event has definitely left its mark. One of the kids gets into an accident involving a creepy green wrinkly kid and this sets into motion a chain of events that includes psychic children, a super secret government project, giant living toys, lots of screaming of character names, terrorists, giant blob creatures, and the future of humanity. Honestly the plot is so complex that trying to explain it here would take way longer than I want to spend on it. Just go watch the film for yourself, trust me it is totally worth it. 

My Thoughts Basically Break Down Like This:
Where to even begin with the epic animation known as Akira. Let me start with a little story. Once upon a time in a land far far away known as Sealy, TX, my BFF and I rented Akira on videotape from a movie store. We were excited at the chance to see it considering it is thought to be anime at its very finest and most amazing. So we watched it, prepared to be awed and astounded. And we weren't. Not even a little bit. The animation was scratchy and dark and hard to see. The English dubbing was awful and didn't always make a whole lot of sense. And the story seemed to drag on forever before anything interesting happened.

The next few years were spent thinking Akira was awful and all the people saying it was the greatest thing ever were poser idiots. And then, miracle of miracles, Akira was released on DVD in a new and remastered form. The colors were cleaned up and lightened, the dubbing was redone by people who could actually pronounce Japanese names correctly, and the audio was adjusted so that normal people without amazing cat or dog level hearing could understand it. Of course we watched it in Japanese with English subtitles this time, but even those had been corrected so that they followed the actual story. Suddenly Akira was brilliant. Amazing. Astounding. All of those things that people had been saying it was for years and I hadn't believed. The story is rich and complex and, I'll admit, a bit hard to understand with only one viewing and an American cultural background. But it is still one of the best anime I have ever seen. It is epic and grand and loud and violent and strange and scary and a tiny bit romantic and a whole lot sad. It has earned its place at the top of the anime feature film ladder.

And that being said, I think it is important to let the internet and world in general know that I think making a live action version of this story, in America of all places, is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. There are so many elements to this story that are so Japanese and tied in to the history and culture of that country that to Americanize it would ruin many of the things that make it great. So back off Hollywood, remake something that actually needs it, or hey, here is a novel idea, come up with something new and original to do instead!