Uncontrolled Science

While the Hubble Space Telescope sits on a launch pad in Florida, waiting to be launched into outer space, the animated feature film "Akira" sits in projectors, waiting to be launched into our imaginations. The Hubble is designed to look further into space and the past than any device yet invented - almost to the Big Bang, wherin pure energy was converted to the mass that occupies the universe.

"Akira" posits that life energy is like the energy that created the universe, and that if science follows that force far enough back through time, it will find the pure energy that preceded the mass that comprises life forms.
And while the Hubble represents the cutting edge of space and optical technology, "Akira" is at least the most ambitious and most expensive of Japan's animated films. It cost a billion yen ($7 million) to produce its 2,212 shots, 160,000 cels and 327 colors, employing hundreds of animators, inkers, colorists and other film technicians.
And all that effort has produced a truly stunning, mesmerizing film that paints a disturbing, thought-provoking picture of an alienated techno-urban future that look all too horribly like right now.

The film starts with an atomic bomb destroying Tokyo in 1988, at the start of World War III, then skips to 2019, when Kaneda, Tetsuo and other street punks spend their nights terrorizing Neo-Tokyo on their souped-up, high-tech motorcycles.

The gang rides against an amazing backdrop of an overbuilt city that seems to have no sky - behind every high-rise monstrosity there are even higher buildings that overwhelm the tiny humans who squirm in the streets.
While Kaneda and his gang battle a rival gang, Clown, government troops battle revolutionaries and religious fanatics in an unending circle of violence.
One running battle ends with Tetsuo captured by a secret government project - Akira - that awakens Tetsuo to his own psychokinetic powers, leading Neo-Tokyo once again to the brink of disaster.

Animation buffs will be impressed by the amazing involved cityscapes and the massive complexity of the riot scenes - each rioter, each fanatic, each troop, of dozens visible at a time, required its own cel, in colorful overlays.
"Akira," based on a Japanese comicbook story that already has millions of fans, is another in a string of cautionary tales that warn us about fooling around too carelessly with science. It is made richer and more complex for its intertwining of the modern urban nightmare, and its ability to involve us in the cares of leading characters who are mostly punks.

It is a complex story, with many themes and characters wandering in and out over wide stretches of film, sometimes making it a little hard to follow. But it also captures complete attention and interest; for its 124 minutes, the audience is transported to its dark world that is both threatened and delighted by what science finds as it tries to manipulate the life force itself.