The Animation Achievement of Akira

Very seldom is there one work of art that is almost unanimously pointed to as the start of a movement. But many look towards the 1988 Japanese anime film, Akira, as the sole source of the anime explosion outside of Japan. The film’s popularity in the US in particular led anime to infiltrate popular culture with shows such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, and Pokemon. One of the reasons for its popularity were the revolutionary animation techniques which heavily influenced the general aesthetic of modern anime. And looking beyond anime, it also had a major impact on the science fiction genre with its story of a dystopian future.

Personally, I have never been a fan of anime but I decided to watch the film as I am always interested in things that had a major impact on world culture. Upon watching it, one of the first things I noticed was that I never felt like I was watching a thirty-year-old film. The animators used very high frame rates for the time that result in smooth motion closer to what we get now with digital animation. The level of detail also makes it hard to date. While most anime films at this time were fairly small budgets and small productions, Akirahad a budget of 9 million dollars, which was huge for the time, and was produced by seven large anime production companies who came together to make the film. The resulting detail is astonishing for hand-drawn animation, as even some of the distant features are meticulously drawn. This film was way ahead of its time in these regards as it would take a long time for digital animation to be able to do the same things it accomplished.

Akira also reached outside the world of anime, though, and influenced live action. Netflix’s show Stranger Thingsopenly took major parts of their storyline from the film. The genetically modified kids who are being held as secret government projects are eerily similar to those found in Akira. It was also cited as having considerable influence on the Matrix trilogy. Visual Effects Supervisor John Gaeta stated that Akira was the inspiration for many of the effects used in the Matrix films.

Akira, in summation, is a film that provided inspiration for many filmmakers over the last thirty years and helped changed the discourse of Japanese animation in western culture. Its achievements in visual animation technique as well as its unique brand of storytelling are hugely important in the discussion of modern film, as viewers today are still awed by what it was able to accomplish.