LMU_ANIMATION: Akira: That Wonderful Moment When A Movie Leaves You With Both a Stomach Ache and a Headache

To be perfectly honest, my initial reaction to Akira was pretty much:

And, at least to some degree, it continues to be. I've read reviews of Akira before which claim it is the perfect gateway drug into anime for those generally opposed to it-- but I'm gonna be completely honest here. If Akira was my first anime, I have no doubt I would avoid this genre like the plague. If it's not already obvious, I'm gonna be pretty brutally honest here. This was easily, EASILY my least favorite of the three anime movies we screened.

And for those of you urging an attitude of "enjoy the ride," I argue that there is no ride to enjoy. And I'm not saying this because I was worried about looking for a deeper meaning in it. The thought came to me occasionally, yes, but overall I came into our screening unfamiliar with the movie and excited at the prospect of watching a new story unfold. What I got disappointed me greatly. There is a stunted, faltering, jerky attempt at a ride, yes, but my car seems to have fallen off the track in the midst of its convoluted plot and web of loose ends.

"Now," some of you might say. "Chill out, Rachel. This is just Akira the movie—We're only dealing with part of the story." Well, sorry, but that's no excuse. Are you telling me if I went and made a new adaptation of Lord of the Rings that was as jumbled, incoherent, and inexplicable as Akira, that anyone would hail it as a triumph of cinema? ANYONE? The answer, it seems clear to me, is no. It would be torn apart by critics as a rambling, pointless narrative that relied more on style than substance. But because Akira is an anime, we're willing to wave off its glaring inconsistencies as "quirks of the genre." This special exception shouldn't be made. A story should be a story, rather than a random mush of events with next to no payoff. This is actually one of my problems with the genre as a whole— Though you'll find I have a clearly anime-influenced art style and am a pretty honest fan of Dragon Ball Z, I don't watch many more animes in any great detail for that specific reason: Many of them simply do not make any sense. And I don't think I should feel obligated to stamp them with a gold star just because they boast amazing animation. Weirdness, I get. But incomprehensibility is inexcusable.

Which isn't to say that I was completely lost during Akira. Eventually, I was able to piece together the general plot. But if you spend the first forty minutes of a movie wondering what the heck is going on, odds are you aren't going to like it when you walk out. The only exception to this rule I see is if such movies have a particularly satisfying ending-- an "Aha!" moment that makes all the extraneous elements suddenly make sense. Akira does not boast such a moment. Even if you're arguing from that "only part of the story" standpoint, there are multiple questions the movie raises itself about the larger story that it could have easily left out for the sake of sense. For instance, what was the deal with Kei and Ryu? If it wasn't going to be addressed in the movie, why bring it up? What's the point of the elaborate opening sequence with the biker gangs fighting (an opening, I'm told, is not present in the manga) if it isn't even remotely part of the greater plot. The movie also just left way too many questions for my tastes.

I think it's important to remember this Akira the MOVIE, not Akira the MANGA. Considering many plot points (and indeed, many large plot points) are changed for this big screen adaptation, it seems an effort by the director to establish itself, at least in some regard, as a separate entity. And if it is a separate entity, we should not be repeatedly directed to the manga in search of answers. Even if Akira the movie was not written with the intention of distancing itself from the manga, the fact remains that a movie must tell and story in-and-of itself. I shouldn't have to rely on source material to get it-- If I do, that's bad storytelling. If this point is disputed, I guess I'll just go grab a novel from the library and make a movie that leaves out 70% of its plot, failing to properly connect the remaining 30% together clearly. Gonna be great, right?

I do appreciate the technical achievements of Akira. I actually very much liked the style and I understand why it's considered such a landmark anime. There were even *SOME* elements of the plot I enjoyed, particularly Tetsuo's descent into madness, which was very well portrayed, and the awkward, dorky efforts of Kaneda to woo Kei (alright, I just like Kaneda in general). That said, this movie just wasn't my style and it's not something I'm eager to watch again... Unless I've been forced to swallow poison, in which case certain... er, interesting scenes would probably do swimmingly at expunging it.

Perhaps the only positive effect I feel this movie has had on me is that I will now be randomly shouting "TETSUO!!!" at people from time to time... Which could be good or bad, depending on how ya look at it XD.

Now I'll have a little fun as I muse on some less important things:

KANEDA!!! TETSUO!!!