Akira (1988)
There are films that arrive and are enjoyed, and there are films that arrive and rearrange the furniture permanently. Neo Tokyo gave a hint of what Japanese animation was quietly building towards, but it was Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira in 1988 that brought the whole argument to a head. Set in a dystopian Neo-Tokyo rebuilt on the ruins of the original city, which was obliterated by a mysterious explosion in 1988 (a date that, at the time of the film's release, was still ten years away, lending it an unsettling near-future weight), the film drops you into a world of biker gangs, crumbling political authority, and classified government experiments gone very badly wrong. The cultural backdrop matters here. Japan in the late 1980s was at the height of its economic bubble, a country of extraordinary prosperity and extraordinary anxiety in equal measure, and Otomo's vision of a megacity teetering on the edge of collapse reads partly as a fever dream of that tension. It is science fiction rooted in something genuinely felt.
The production itself is a landmark of a particular, unrepeatable kind. Otomo adapted his own manga, which had been running in Young Magazine since 1982, compressing thousands of pages into a 124-minute feature with a budget reported at around 1.1 billion yen, making it one of the most expensive anime productions ever attempted at that point. The consortium behind it, spanning MBS, Sumitomo Corporation, TOHO, Kodansha and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, was betting heavily on the project, and the ambition shows in every frame. Otomo had previously contributed to the anthology film Neo Tokyo, but nothing in his prior work quite prepared audiences for the scale of what he pulled off here. The animation was produced using a then-unusual method of recording the voice performances first and animating to match the lip movements, the reverse of standard practice at the time, which gave the character performances a naturalism that animation rarely captured. Nozomu Sasaki as the volatile, increasingly terrifying Tetsuo and Mitsuo Iwata as his childhood friend Kaneda anchor a large ensemble that also includes Mami Koyama, Taro Ishida and Mizuho Suzuki, all bringing a lived-in credibility to roles that could easily have tipped into cartoon extremity. Alongside them, Godzilla Minus One is perhaps the clearest recent reminder that Japanese genre filmmaking, in any medium, has a gift for grounding spectacle in genuine human cost, and Akira set much of that template.
I genuinely paused the screen multiple times through Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 cyberpunk epic Akira just to stare at a single frame of Neo-Tokyo’s neon-drenched skyline.
It’s a rare thing for a film to demand you stop the clock just to absorb its visual majesty, but this picture does it constantly. Honestly, it’s not hyperbole to call this arguably the greatest piece of adult animation ever put to celluloid. In an era where we’re drowning in weightless, plastic-looking CGI, watching Otomo’s team craft a world with this level of meticulous, hand-drawn detail feels like witnessing an absolute miracle.
Every single scene defies belief when you think about the sheer human labour involved. The fluidity of the motorcycle chases, the grotesque, melting body horror of the psychic mutations, the way the rain slicks off the leather jackets, it’s all rendered with a staggering, tactile reality. Fair play to the animators, because they weren't just moving cels around; they were painting a living, breathing, hyper-kinetic metropolis. It’s a cracking achievement that makes modern, multi-million-dollar animated features look like they were rushed out the door by a skeleton crew.
Narratively, the picture is just as robust, tracking a secret Japanese government project that creates powerful psychics before the whole thing predictably and spectacularly goes awry. If you’re a gamer, you’ll immediately recognise the DNA here; I can pretty much guarantee this movie laid the exact blueprint for the story and setting of Final Fantasy VII. The similarities in the eco-terrorism, the corrupt military, and the brooding, super-powered protagonists are impossible to ignore. Anchoring all this chaos is the original Japanese voice cast, with Nozomu Sasaki and Mitsuo Iwata delivering genuinely fantastic performances that bring a raw, emotional weight to the characters that the clunky English dub always failed to capture.
Akira is a towering, monumental achievement that completely redefined what animation could achieve on the global stage. Otomo didn't just make a cartoon; he crafted a sprawling, visually breathtaking dystopian tragedy that still feels incredibly relevant and astonishingly modern nearly four decades later. It’s a flawless, genre-defining triumph that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
Akira is one of those rare films that functions simultaneously as a cultural artefact, a technical benchmark and a straightforward story about two young men pulling in opposite directions. Its influence on science fiction, gaming, and animation worldwide is almost too broad to map neatly, threading through everything from Western superhero cinema to the aesthetic DNA of titles like Casshern. The score by Geinoh Yamashirogumi, built from gamelan, Tibetan chant and orchestral electronics, remains one of the most distinctive in cinema. If you have only ever caught it on a small screen or in a poor transfer, tracking down a proper theatrical screening or a high-quality home presentation is genuinely worth the effort. Nearly four decades on, it remains the film that other animated films are quietly measured against, whether they admit it or not.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 1988 | Watched: 2026-07-22
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Akira (1988) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Disney Plus · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Crunchyroll · Crunchyroll Amazon Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US
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