Hacker Cinema
Akira
AKIRA
1988 · Film · 124 min
Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo
AnimationScience FictionAction
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
32 positive5 negative2 mixed31 neutralfrom 70 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
74 comments on Hacker News
Canal+ had a few animes not suited for kids and a few others that didn't really fit the catalog from TF1 or TMC (which was mostly available south of France). Those 2 had volume, Canal+ had more "quality" ones.
I remember watching Akira, some DBZ movies, Evangelion, Vision of Escaflowne, Armitage III and many others!
Lain is 10/10. Akira/Ghost in the Shell are great too. Evangelion is a weak 7/10 in comparison to them in every aspect imaginable. I also realized that Evangelion is Japan's version of assigning weird mysticism to religions they don't understand (much how westerners depict shinto/daoism/buddhism with tons of mysticism).
Evangelion is a disgusting anime to consider part of your national personification. Drop it and pick up Ghibli films more please Japan.
If you're an Otaku it's not too surprising you don't like Ghibli. Ghibli is quite atypical and the reason it got popular is because it's not like the standard anime, that people used to look down on, in the 80s and forward until maybe 2015 when it got normalized.
>The stories don’t really have a proper conclusion, it’s often a pattern of a thing happened, let’s undo the thing, life goes on.
One could say this about Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and even Evangelion too.
I personally think that Ghibli is popular because it gives a sense of nostalgia, a beautiful depiction of nature and it feels alive because the care that goes in to the background and background characters movement.
It feel less like a theater, a story crafted to entertain, and more just like a snapshot of life of someone/something that will go on after the movie ends.
Also as for music. If you watched the American version, they've actually changed many scenes and added additional music. Disney said that American populace couldn't watch a scene where no music is present for happens for more than 3 min so they had to add some extra music. [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/jM6PPxN1xas?si=pqBBNhnKtujxs4kt
What you are saying is that you either do not understand or do not care for craft (it’s an observation, not a criticism), but craft has definite value beyond the end result. Effort does play a huge part, including in animation.
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2019/03/painting-backgrounds-of-akira.html
The lights in windows on the background of Akira, for example, were painstakingly painted one by one. That takes skill. That is impressive. It’s the kind of work that makes one with an appreciation for art (which goes beyond “pretty picture”) take another look and imagine what the artist was feeling and thinking as they were working. It makes you wonder about exact techniques and how to improve them, how to create something new.
All of that enhances the appreciation for the movie. The craft, the skill, the sweat put into it to make a hard and grandiose vision plays into how good and influential it has become.
Had those buildings just been spit out by gen AI along with everything else, there would be no value to taking a second look. You’d probably be looking at distorted images anyway, and even if you weren’t it’d just be a bunch of pixels with no intentionality to it. If no one put effort into the details, there’s no reason to look at them. The converse is also true.
Seconding Fullmetal Alchemist. I hear the remake (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) is usually regarded as the better version. More suggestions: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Death Note, Sousou no Frieren, Cowboy Bebop, Nichijou, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Bakemonogatari. There's also quite a few good movies, anything by Studio Ghibli is great, and so are Akira, Perfect Blue, and Ghost in the Shell.
This is tangential, but I recommend Katsushiro Otomo's (of Akira fame) dystopian take on large-scale automated construction, the short movie Construction Cancellation Order, part of an anthology known in the west as Neo Tokyo[1], released in 1987 (Akira was released in 1988).
I won't link to it here, but it seems someone uploaded it to archive.org (most likely illegally).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Tokyo_(film)
> Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does.
I would put Akira in that bucket, but I see your point.
The way counter-culture is brought into mainstream is a lot more strategic in Japan, and the reader is expecting to do more deciphering work than in Blade Runner for instance.
E.g. Final Fantasy is overtly about fighting a Zaibatsu like corporate overlord that's depleting the vital resources of an environment. But what's promoted is gun-swords, spiky hairs and cute or sexy fighters.
Same way Reiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 is a 113 episodes long dissing of the corporate culture but it's all behind psychedelic tropes.
Those are arguably mainstream, given the money,an-hours and corporate weight invested in them and the general reception.
But none of them will put the main message up-front as much as Hunger Games would for instance, there is always a veil of flashiness that needs to be peeled to get to the substance.
(to note, SF live action is a lot harder to fund in Japan. I'd attribute that to the existence of anime which is so much more cost effective. With the budget for a live action Gundam you could make three TV series)
This is especially true for Akira. While it's an incredible movie, it really doesn't end clearly and the reason is that it's simply not the end of the story. The movie ends roughly half way through the Manga which is insanely well done and should be read by everyone.
Seeing something like this or Akira on the big screen there is an analogue patina to meticulous hand drawn motion and some of the effects like the physically process glow effects of the neon lights in Akira that do give a very different feeling than a CG shot.
Although only a few will really appreciate why it's different I definitely think the difference has a heavy effect on the vibe of a movie.
Same with shooting on film vs digital, not that digital is worse it has it's own feeling which can be used with intent.
The best story telling in anime doesn't come from anything close to Ghibli - at least not modern Ghibli.
If you want high concept, good, unique stories, it's going to take you to some much more indie sutff. Serial Experiments Lain, The Tatami Galaxy, Perfect Blue (and everything that director made), Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), Akira, and a bunch of other weird 80s/90s anime films you likely wouldn't even consider.
The Long Goodbye (R. Altman) Akira (Otomo) Cinema Paradiso (G. Tornatore) In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai) Tron (S. Lisberger) Stop Making Sense (J. Demme)
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
Movies I rewatch like once a year: Trainspotting (1996), Donnie Darko (2001), La Haine (1995)
Movies I've watched quite a few times and wouldn't mind watching again right now: The Matrix (1999), Akira, Breakfast Club
> That story started in the early ‘90s, in London. A local businessman saw Akira at an art film screening.
Exhibit A on why I looooove movie screenings
Imaging seeing a bunch of quirky short film misses from amateur producers that at least take initiative, to seeing Akira. in the early 90s. an advanced style in a medium nobody had really explored with a cohesive well thought out message. And you’re like “and this story and director came out of where? Japan?”
today that would share similarities to the idea of something wholly unexpected in the entertainment world came out of Iraq, but without any fanfare just an exhibit at a small industry event in your town
Akira is a cult classic and a pivotal point in anime - much more in the US than in Japan. If you don't know of a film surpassing it in skill and consideration in the thirty years since it was made it probably says more about your exposure to anime. Maybe it's just that Cyberpunk is less popular now and the big genres are of less interest to you.
- The Thin Red Line.
The narative structure is hard to get the first time you watch the movie, but once you get it, it can change the way you see (the/our) nature.
- The Secret of NIMH.
Saw it the first time at 4 or 5 and was in awe, but it tooks several more years to understand it fully.
- The Truman Show.
It's basically my life.
- Akira.
No particular reason, except it's the first Manga which gets international recognition and propulsed the industry in the grown-up domain.
I mean, you're free to make up your own definition, but it won't be shared by the vast majority of other people.
From the Wikipedia article: [1]
> Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech" featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.
> The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things").
> Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir
All of this comes from the foundational literary and cinematic works that defined the cyberpunk genre, namely (in rough chronological order): Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Akira, Snow Crash, Johnny Mnemonic, and The Matrix.
The visual aesthetic representation of the cyberpunk genre is firmly rooted in a vocabulary involving dense cityscapes, night, neon lights, and rain (echoing the film noir vocabulary), often set in slums of East Asian metropolises or US Chinatowns.
Deciding that the common elements of all these works isn't what "cyberpunk" is is simply creating your own, personal, idiosyncratic definition.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Yeah! How wild would it have been to see it in 1988 when it was released? I can't even imagine. I saw it in 1993 when it made its way to American VHS.
Really the main mindblowing thing to me was the level of execution w.r.t. the designs and the animation itself. When you look at the credits for Akira, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly every animation studio in Japan contributed to it, at more-or-less the crest of the Japanese "bubble economy" when the country was flowing with loads of capital. I remember pausing a bunch of scenes and just gawking at them frame by frame.
It was wild to see all of that, in a 2hr animated movie, aimed at adults.
It was infuriating as well, because the American animation industry was turning out almost exclusively kids' garbage in the decades leading up to 1993. I felt like our country was really wasting the medium. Although, happily, I think we really turned it around. Pixar lead the way IMO.
Miyazaki is pretty well known for having “world-class” dubs; I don’t think liking them is considered controversial. Liking the Akira dub or the dub on a Satoshi Kon film, on the other hand :-)
Part of what made Anime and Manga so "exotic" back in the day was just how different it was to anything you'd find in the West.
A lot of early Anime has sci-fi/post-apocalyptic vibes because Japan was essentially a post-apocalyptic society. Japan is the only nation to have nuclear weapons used against it. It was so devastating, the entire world decided to just not do that sort of thing again.
But the level of national trauma Japan faced must have been something else. It affected their creative output for decades. Kaiju movies are essentially a response to the event. And elements of nuclear desolation is present in a lot of Anime. Akira, Vampire Hunter D, the earlier works of Miyazaki.
It's a huge fucking cultural touchstone for at least a couple of generations of Japanese people.
But we're also about 80 years from the event. Things are different in Japan. People have been born, lived full lives, and died between the time the bombs fell and today. There likely are children of children of people who were born after the bombs.
Japan today does have a lot more in common with the world at large. Their contemporary cultural touchstones are much the same ones around the world. So it makes sense that their art would reflect this.
The interesting one is East vs West. As a child, I remember some documentary saying that robotics development was ahead in China/Japan, because the East grew up on stories like Doraemon and Akira, while the West was resistant to it because of Terminator, The Matrix, Neuromancer, etc. The idea in the West is that AI is dangerous, while the East grew up with the idea of them as friends and leaders.
This probably wasn't that true because obviously AI & robotics research is booming in the US.
But I think the data hints that consumer demand for AI and AGI might be significantly higher in China, etc. There was also the recent controversy around Midjourney banning Xi Jinping images lately, which suggests that they're eyeing the Chinese consumer market.
Ghost in the Shell, Sunshine, Children of Men, 12 Monkeys, Edge of Tomorrow, Moon
The Expanse show/books are great
I’m waiting til 13 for Akira
Mine is 11 and matrix, terminator, back to the future, arrival were all too slow. He liked the Jurassic Park books but the movie was “too hokey.”
> PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan.
I totally agree with everything on this list, except Akira and NGE. And I am saying that as someone for whom NGE is the all-time personal favorite piece of animated media (and I like Akira a lot too, just not as much).
Akira and NGE are pretty much deconstructions of genres, and are really heavy on at least some basic level of previous exposure and understanding of the context. I am fairly certain that if you make someone without much previous exposure to the context watch Akira, you will get a very resounding "what the fuck did you just make me watch". Watched it in a movie theater myself around 5 years ago, and it was definitely a wild ride. With NGE, I rewatched it many times, partially because I almost always discovered something new on subsequent rewatches.
The rest of the ones you've mentioned are great for easing-in though, and are not shallow even in the slightest. I would also add Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex series to the list of recommendations.
There are quite a few recommendations for the classics, but if someone doesn't enjoy the slow burn of those deep books, maybe they should start with something lot more dopaminergic: animes and movies!
PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan.
So, movies. I only saw The Shawshank Redemption a few years ago, and it's really really good. Classic. Human. Touching. I'm not even sure how to characterize it except yes, really go see it, it's really at the top of the power distribution of movies.
12 Angry Men. At this point it's the cliché of old but good movies. At this point it's a satire of a socially interesting movie due to its naivete, yet for someone who seems a bit close minded it might be just the right thing. (Or not? :D)
The Pianist. Again, simple. Brutal. Or the recent Joker.
. . .
But really when it comes to AI and fiction.
Blade Runner. If that's not fiction that's worth investing time into, then what is? Even typing this I've got the chills thinking about Roy Batty.
Given you like the Miyazake movies so much, you really should give Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70019062) a watch.
Avoid the American "Warriors of the Wind" because it is terrible, for reasons similar to what you wrote about Akira.
Animated movies that I often rewatch (in no particular order):
- Spirited Away
- Grave of the Fireflies
- Finding Dory
- Up
- Tokyo Godfathers
- Akira (NOT the English dub, which completely changes the story and dialogue for the worse, and for no good reason)
- Mononoke Hime
- Ghost in the Shell (the original one)
- My Neighbor Totoro
Animated series I'll rewatch:
- Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
- Castlevania
- Futurama
- Archer
- Arcane
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ergo Proxy
- The Dragon Prince
- Hakaba Kitaro
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
Youtube is also turning into garbage. First 10 or so results are relevant vids, then it becomes a mishmash of "people also watched", "for you", shorts, and similar suggested vids.
EDIT: As for FB. The other day I watched three Studio Ghibli movies on Netflix. The last time I watched anything anime related, was Akira some 30 years ago.
Now the feed is being bombarded with anime and manga meme content. I click "hide all" from these random pages, but they just keep popping up.
My wish/dream has been that realistic tech is so mature they're no longer spectacles. I felt "tentpole" movies were getting there before Marvel kicked off. Instead the focus is either on story or stylization. I love that in Turning Red they billowing smoke will dissipate into clumping bubbles and they adopted a lot of anime styles into 3d. Effects like smoke, water, and fire are the easiest to focus on. 2d animation has done a lot of this for decades; Malificent's dragon breath, Genie's smoke, Akira's effects.
I think CG sequels, especially as far apart as Toy Story 1 and 4 (24 years!), are a unique thing. It has to be familiar and consistent with previous movies that used older tech, but they can't make a new movie using 24 year old tech, either.
Akira has everything described in the article practiced to an absurd degree. I don't think there is a single light in the movie that isn't an actual real light.
> I would say Japan's second only to the UK in terms of visible cultural exports here.
That's really interesting, I haven't been to the States until now so that is really news to me. To be honest I had thought that the Japanese "mania" (if I may call it so) had run its course back in the '80s (the "Karate Kid" movies, Akira as an underground (?) cultural phenomenon, the Nakatomi Corporation), with an important continuation in the '90s through the anime mania, maybe also in the 2000s, when many people (re-)discovered Miyazaki and Takahata. Also the JDM car scene that was made famous by the first F&F movies. Anyway, I thought all that was in the past, for example a Mk4 Toyota Supra sold for a record auction price recently [1], I thought there's no way that culture is still part of the mainstream, joining it has become too expensive.
I certainly do notice the fascination Japan as a country still holds among many in the tech-crowd scene like is the case for many HN-ers in here, but I thought that was a local and contained phenomenon.
[1] https://www.thesupercarblog.com/toyota-supra-a80-mark-4-rm-sothebys-auction-record-price-amelia-island/
Nah.
I'd push things like Spirited Away or Tokyo Godfathers first, as far as anime-movies go actually.
EoE is good for the Evangelion fans. But honestly, Tokyo Godfathers hit me way harder.
EoE probably doesn't even hit my top 5 list of anime movies.
#1: Spirited Away
#2: Tokyo Godfathers
#3: Girl who Leapt through Time
#4: Summer Wars
#5: "Voices of a Distant Star" for #5? Hmm, or maybe "Time of Eve" ?? A lot of things I wanna fit in here but not EoE yet.
Not even getting to the "classics" like Akira, Eden of the East, Ghost in a Shell or whatever. These above movies have some mainstream appeal but still manage to hit that thoughtful analysis and depth. I'd still put something like Ghost in a Shell or "Your Name" above EoE...
There are also 'kid anime movies' like Patema Inverted that really were excellent and deserve recognition.
EoE is niche and fine for Evangelion fans though. Absolutely beautiful, and some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen. But you gotta see some of the __good anime movies__ out there. They all stand above EoE IMO.
Have you heard of Akira, that anime from 1988? It's by Katsuhro Otomo. I'm a fan of his work. If you are too, then these two are worth seeing if you haven't already...
Otomo's 1991 Roujin-Z was made available for viewing on YouTube this past year. It's 1h20m. Link: https://youtu.be/itg4zKaUMgY
There's also Otomo's 1995 Memories. It's great. I haven't found a good version of it on YouTube, but a quality stream of it is available on Amazon Prime.
Otomo also worked on Metropolis (2001) and Steamboy (2004). They're both great.
The problem with your wager is that on a long enough timeline, the doomsayers are always right.
So saying anything OR societal collapse is going to evaluate to true.
There are any number of disasters, both terrestrial and cosmic, that can radically change the landscape of the Earth.
I also don't really find discussions about what's going to happen beyond our lifetime that interesting for the most part. Often, they're just fantastic wishing attached to some loose thread of logic.
The Island
Escape from New York
The Running Man
Akira
Strange Days
A Scanner Darkly
Back to the Future II
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010: The Year We Make Contact
Death Race 2000
1984
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Freejack
Westworld
Real Steel
Pacific Rim
12 Monkeys
The Abyss
Timecop
And a host of other films and books are set in futures that are now our past. And while some of these are fantasy designed to entertain, they all make assumptions about what would be possible by that time. And we have fallen woefully short of those predictions. So short, that "flying cars and meals in pill form" is a meme about such predictions.
On the surface, they serve decently good food and an array of cocktails and other beverages, and it generally isn't overpriced. They have great milkshakes and they'll bring you warm cookies just as soon as a giant bowl of popcorn with parmesan.
But that stuff isn't strictly unique anymore; there are other dinner-and-movie chains.
What really makes them special is all their auxiliary stuff. Before a movie, instead of ads they show relevant obscure video clips that are funny and/or interesting. Before a superhero movie they might show relevant action figure commercials from the 80s, or clips of goofy unlicensed knockoff movies that they found on YouTube, etc. Famously, you're not allowed to talk/text once a movie is playing [1]. They'll have themed cocktails and food for movies that are currently showing. Every month they pick a selection of classic movies and do showings of those throughout. Sometimes they'll bring in an actor or the director for after-screening Q&A. For cult hits they'll do themed "movie parties" where everybody's encouraged to quote/sing-along, and often there are props. We went to a Monty Python and the Holy Grail party where everyone was given, among other things, coconut shells to clap. We saw Hackers on the big screen (which was incredible in its own right), and everyone was encouraged to wear their best hacker-punk getups and then they had a costume contest (and we got to take home floppy disks with "HACK THE PLANET" emblazoned on them). We saw Akira on the big screen (!!) and they had a synchronized laser-lightshow in the theater. We went to an "anime brunch" they did several Sunday mornings in a row where they'd pick a genre of anime and show four or five episodes from different shows and you could order coffee and stuff and it only cost $5 at the door.
And the person hosting/organizing these events always comes up to the front and talks about the thing you're going to be watching. They're personally invested. They geek out, telling anecdotes from their own life and giving background on why people love this thing so much. It gets you excited even if you've never heard of it before.
Everything - even the decorations and marketing - gives you the distinct sense that everyone calling the shots at this company is super into movies, and their enthusiasm is contagious even if you don't consider yourself an enthusiast
[1] Except at movie-parties, which are all about audience participation
As a side note, the way the plants and electronics are interwoven is summoning strange emotions for me, an Akira'esqe picture... There are two main ways these days to do natural farming, one is back to the roots, the other one is this high-tech, putting all advancements we got into it. Straight out of a sci-fi movie if you ask me.
I never lived in Japan, I know about a few issues (from hikkikomoris, suicide rates to good old mafia) but there's something fascinating about that country. Tell me if I'm wrong but their sense of aesthetics, minimalism, precision is special.
I argued with a colleague who worked for a japanese import/export company, he said they were crude, dumb and sleazy.. mostly succeeding by hiring hard working foreigners. That's one viewpoint, but I've also seen documentaries about early semiconductor industry in japan, and while they lifted a few patents, they did do their own share of hard work to turn them into workable devices (to the point where Japan became a reputable country in the field, from audio to computing).
Same goes for animation, Akira was a masterpiece of detail. The gaming industry was great. Ancestral toolsmith (famous katana blacksmith process).. samurai code.
More recently the manufacturing paradigm (toyota/lean).
There's a lot to love from there.
Growing up, i was a lot like you. The stories, artwork and animation in a lot of those darker, more adult animes blew my mind. I remember the first time I saw Akira, like you when I was probably way too young, My mind just couldn't even really grasp what i was watching. I'd never seen anything like that before. I ended up somehow watching a dubbed version of ninja scroll that came on TV some time after that and i was pretty hooked.
I find though, I can't get into newer anime, or a lot of newer animation in general these days. I really miss the old style of animation and artwork, both western and Japanese. Every series or movie had its own unique style, some of the artwork was so fantastic and just mind blowing. Some of the landscapes and scenery created in older animation could take you to some of the most amazing or terrifying or strange places you couldn't even imagine.
I find a lot of animation to look generic and overproduced these days and in general, the format's become fairly formulaic and nothing really stands out as special in the ways a lot of those older animes did. Don't get me wrong, i have seen some fantastic modern animation. I was speaking more in general.
I keep hoping that we'll have this Renaissance of artists who want to go back to the traditional ways just to break this new mold animation seems to have gotten itself stuck in.
A month or so ago I finally watched the Neon Genesis Evangelion series after hearing about it for more than 20 years. After slogging through a few episodes of predictable awkard-teenagers-pilot-giant-robots-to-save-the-world it finally reveals itself as a stunning exploration into the minds of troubled youth who are, effectively, subjected to a barrage of traumatic crises. It's a deep, rich world with complex characters, all with Herculean responsibilities and human weaknesses.
I'll have to watch Lain now, thanks to your comment.
I enjoy the usual suspects: Akira, Ghost in the Shell (including Standalone Complex), and Cowboy Bebop immensely. I like Robotech, though much of it is nostalgia. But I've found straying from the essentials to be challenging for my very Western tastes.
I tried to watch Stein's Gate and thought it was very clever, but the awkward romance and over-the-top characteristics of the main character were a bit too much. Knights of Sidonia and Attack on Titan got too weird, too quickly. I was too old for Dragonball. There's a lot of Western-focused, Japanese-animated options out there, but they almost universally lack the depth of their anime counterparts.
I'd love some recommendations if you have any, whether they be newer stuff or classics that I've overlooked.
I suppose anyone can say "Your argument is coming from your bubble" without saying much else. It's not a great argument. But I think I'd like to hear why you think your read on the situation is better than mine.
Here's why I think I've got a good read on this: I'm in my 40s and I have friends, family and acquaintances from all walks of life. I specifically live my life so that I don't have a bubble or a lot of dependencies. I just hang out a lot online and I'm reporting what I see.
My 10 year old niece loves anime and video games. I have some friends in their 20s and 30s who love anime and video games. I hang out on Twitch, Reddit or 9gag and almost exclusively peruse these sites using the "popular" firehose - I always see lots and lots of references to anime, video games and comic-book movies. Actual comics/comic-books do not come up quite as often - but cos-play does.
I don't really like anime. I enjoyed some classics when I younger - titles such as Akira, Ninja Scroll and uhhh Blood: The Last Vampire. I play one video game: Rocket League. Other than that, I'm not what you'd call a "gamer".
On Twitch though, I definitely see high school kids with tons of viewers playing all sorts of games and talking about anime.
What's your experience?
...is unmatched by what's seen here in the U.S. Is it because the movie industry there is more permissive towards such genere?
Can you elaborate on this? On the face of your comment, I think you might just be unaware of a lot of films that have been made in the US. The article mentioned the American David Lynch's Eraserhead as an influence of these works. David Cronenberg is also undoubtedly a huge influence here as well (I know he's Canadian, but he largely works in the American movie industry).
It's not like Tetsuo: The Iron Man was a huge financial or mainstream success. Most of these movies were mostly relegated to the grindhouse, and American has more than its share of grindhouse film makers (ala John Waters). Also consider that The Fly was as big a financial success as Akira.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't think Japanese artists & audiences are very different from their American counterparts in this regard. It is not distinctly Japanese or American to dream up horrific stuff, but rather, it's human to hold up a mirror to an, at times, horrific existence.
> Hell, the only thing you listed that I'd think people in the US with a passing familiarity with anime might know would be Cowboy Bebop.
Really? He listed Akira!
From Wikipedia:
> The film had a production budget of ¥700 million ($5.5 million), making it the most expensive anime film at the time
> The film had a significant impact on popular culture worldwide, paving the way for the growth of anime and Japanese popular culture in the Western world
As an aside, I was a performer in this performance piece: https://www.artbasel.com/news/messeplatz-alexandra-pirici-glossary
It uses "gestures and sounds which are taken from both natural and popular media sources, Pirici renders disparate forms of heritage and cultural memory, conceiving Aggregate as a time capsule in which fragments of vernacular culture, art history, and everyday life are given new, living embodiments."
I was surprised when out of a diverse selection of materials from world culture, the choreographer also chose to include the theme song from Ghost in the shell.
Visually at least, I think Akira is one of the most visually impressive animated films ever, especially for something made in the 80's when quality standards were much lower
It is a matter of taste of course, but, say, Makoto Shinkai's 'Garden of Words' I found a lot more visually pleasing. I know you cannot compare works from different eras, but that just highlights that today, one would watch Akira more for its history than for how it stands on its own today. In comparison, the original Blade Runner stands very well in its own right today and I would not hesitate to recommend it to someone who hasn't watched it.
Akira just didn't captivate me, and I watched it for the first time in a packed out cinema.
As albertyezer’s comment noted, this was definitely a very influential project for film and art in general.
On the other hand, to understand the significance of the story, you have to notice the subtle “identity” of Tokyo. The city is described as “Neo-” Tokyo, and we hear the characters discuss that the transformation from Tokyo -> Neo-Tokyo occurred after a big explosion. And the film itself ends on a big explosion destroying the city.
In some ways, all these events are subtle references to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombings of Tokyo. At the end, we see the city’s natural state restore itself (with floods of water and sunlight) in an oddly meditative moment. I think for the Japanese population in particular, Akira portrayed an underlying message of hope, trust and humanity, something very important for a recovering nation.
The message is probably much harder for us to relate to, given our time dilation from such historical events.
> The story made little sense and appeared to have little, if any, depth.
I felt similarly the first time I watched it, but I walked out feeling confused rather than feeling like the film lacks depth. IMO a large portion of the film is spent exploring the notion of power than one can't control. In fact, we can split the different characters of the film into those who are corrupted by this path (the scientist who clearly wants to see Akira's power blossom, the military lead who wants it controlled for public safety/the military, Tetsuo who is always trying to take on more responsibility and leadership then he can. Only character's like Kaneda, who don't submit themselves to their own desires for power, seem to faire well in the world around them .. but that's just my two cents.
> The graphics looked dated and not very inspiring.
I can't disagree with this more. This film came out in 1988, and nothing else even came close in terms of its visual effects for an animated film. I'm sure at the time people couldn't believe what they were watching, it must have seemed really alien.
I'm honestly surprised that you think it looks dated. Even today, animes I've seen (although granted that isn't many) don't achieve the same level of beauty in their animation of light. You can see examples throughout this link to jog your memory if it's been a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf0WjeE6eyM
Why is Akira considered good? I watched it as an adult a few years ago and did not get the appeal. The story made little sense and appeared to have little, if any, depth. I wasn't really taken by the atmosphere or the 'feel' of it either. The graphics looked dated and not very inspiring.
Is it one of those movies that is noteworthy because it was the first to try certain things? Because it was very impressive for its time? Because people associate a sense of nostalgia with it? I would hardly recommend it today to someone looking for a good movie to watch. Some of my most favourite movies are old and some are anime, and I am a big fan of cyberpunk, so I don't think it's because of my aversion to the genre.
Interesting! Particularly the discovery of the sparing use of green in Akira. I haven't seen either of those films in quite a few years and it really brought back to me how staggeringly beautiful they are.
When I was in Sydney in 2018 I was fortunate enough to stumble upon the 'Anime Architecture' exhibition[1] at the Japan Foundation, which included various pencil drawings and hand-drawn cells from Ghost in the Shell. It's a traveling exhibition so if it ends up near you and you're a Ghost in the Shell fan I highly recommend checking it out.
[1] https://anime-architecture.org
An old friend of mine worked on an unreleased SEGA Genesis game for the movie Akira. The ROM was recently "discovered" on the internets.
Pics and vids: https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype)
The ones that come to mind first are Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Patlabor (particularly the first movie), and Paprika.
Mark Fisher (RIP) made a good point in this vein: our vision for the future is stuck in the '70s and '80s. If you watch a really old sci-fi movie like Forbidden Planet[0] (or listen to its rather incredible proto-industrial soundtrack[1]), you get the distinct feeling that it's "cheesy" or "wrong", that its vision of the future has fallen greatly out of sync with our own. This feeling diminishes as you go forward in time, and basically subsides entirely once you reach the eighties. Throbbing Gristle, Kraftwerk, Blade Runner, Akira... all "futuristic", even to modern eyes and ears. Is this due to improvements in visual effects and electronic instrumentation, or have we "given up" on the future in a very real sense?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQbnyHNY3k
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unSrf-htPbk
Akira is not as iconoclastic in its philosophy as it was in its technical and artistic attributes at the time. It was also heavily influenced by and can be seen as a modern-day retelling/rewarning of the hiroshima/nagasaki incidents.
NGE can be philosophically heavy at times but is too diluted by its action sequences and fan service moments.
The first GITS movie is a philosophical tour de force and a piece of art that transcends time. A masterpiece.
To those who have watched the 1988 Anime Sci-fi film Akira, it is set in 2019 aka the future and what they got wrong amuses me greatly
I doubt that was the case. Looking at HL2 now, with all those other FPS games that built up upon what HL2 introduced, of course it doesn't look that impressive. But at the time, it felt like it came from the future. The whole physics gameplay aspect was pretty much unprecedented at that time, especially with how seamless and integral it felt. It didn't feel forced or bolted-on at all.
A good analogy in other media would be Citizen Kane (movies), NWA (music), or Akira (japanese animation). Neither of those would garner mass praise if they were released today, but they were first of a kind and paved the way for moving their respective medium forward.
I don't know about all anime (I'm not a fan) but here's a Ghibli movie in 4K HDR: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Lupin-III-The-Castle-of-Cagliostro-4K-Blu-ray/dp/B07PTSQ1KX
Akira is coming in 4K HDR too.
There is a 4k remaster of Akira being produced from the original 35mm film that should be out next year. 35mm to 4k should be a downscaling, so that might do when it becomes available.
I don't know how old you are now, but Neuromancer was published in 1984, Blade Runner hit the cinemas 1982, and later the GITS movie in 1995 (manga published 1989), which inspired the Matrix movies and so on. Don't forget about Akira.
Dystopian futures aren't really anything new.
Well both your reply and the above 'replier' have simply attacked my comment ad-hominem, and have not provided any basis for your arguments.
I don't think it adds anything to the argument to indicate "People who say such and such just want to do this or that"
That 'a lot of films could not get made' is not a controversial idea - have a listen to Hollywood podcasts. Granted, a lot of the 'can't get made' memes are directed at issues such as 'market size' and geopolitics (i.e. China market), there's no shortage of films that have suffered consequences due to nearly arbitrary issues over race, gender etc. - and these were the films that were approved.
"Scarlett Johansson is again at the center of a casting controversy, this time for accepting a role to play a transgender man. " [1]
"Taika Waititi Teases ‘Akira’ Film Adaptation, Says No One Has to Worry About Whitewashing" [2]
"Cloud Atlas under fire for casting white actors in 'yellowface' makeup" [3]
Literally a film made by two hyper-progressive transgender women, 'under fire' for casting people of different ethnicities and genders, in different roles entirely to make a point about such things, faces controversy.
These various movements represent serious restrictions to artistic creativity and freedom of expression in the arts, and it's had a chilling effect on the industry.
The studios have 'taken note' - and now there are an entire series of stories and characters removed from pop culture reference, due to the antagonizing of a fairly small number of individuals.
Twitter has become a tool of mass suppression, whereby a few angry people can often dictate 'what cannot be done'.
The effect is pronounced and significant, affecting casting decisions in most films made in Hollywood.
Consider that in 2019 there was no host for the Oscars - largely because nobody wants to step up to the plate and undergo the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for presidential candidates. Any public statement ever made, in any context, that runs afoul of one group or another, can have one permanently removed - I'm not defending terrible people like Bryan Singer (X-Men), rather, guys like James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), who made some really tasteless jokes on Twitter and lost his job (though thankfully regained).
Finally, on a side note, I'll refer to John Cleese himself during a Marc Maron interview (you can search iTunes for it, highly recommended): "You can't make a joke about the French Revolution anymore". I understand this isn't quite a concern over sensitivities, but Cleese himself pokes in this direction in his interviews.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/07/04/scarlett-johansson-faces-backlash-again-role-transgender-man/757746002/
[2] https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/taika-waititi-akira-film-details-whitewashing-1201886320/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/oct/26/cloud-atlas-under-fire-yellowface
Akira is one of the greats. It’s essentially the story of post-WWII Japan retold as a sci-fi story.
Idiocracy (2005?) was a cult film for years and has recently become less obscure.
Anything with Sharlto Copley in it is going to be good. Or at least his role in it will be good. What a great and under appreciated actor.
I believe it. As a film fan, this is why I really dislike Netflix—they seem a repeat offender at ripping off other artists. A few of their shows like Stranger Things (Alien, Poltergeist, Akira, Goonies) and especially Godless (Rio Bravo; Magnificent Seven; Good, Bad, and the Ugly) go beyond homage and into outright copying and stealing ideas. I understand tropes and references, but I think Netflix has shown a pattern of basically just making imitation products of other successful products. I can watch nearly anything on HBO, but can hardly find anything half worth watching on Netflix and it’s nearly all derivative of something else more interesting.
Books & movies can help you connect with your location or situation, they don't have to be a diversion.
When living in China I liked to watch dystopian sci-fi & anime based in large cities - Akira, Ghost in the shell, Oblivion, Dredd, The fifth element, total recall
Then grab some headphones and go for a wander around your megacity :)
PS this also works for other scenarios. Eg "Black cat white cat", or "Brother" if strapped for cash. "Fight club" if your job is getting you stressed.
I think lot of art is created by artists as a "cure" for their current worries. And their problems tend to be just like ours.
I disagree, although they created a beautiful vision of the future it just doesn't resonate with what GITS is to me.
The world of GITS never felt like a neon billboard strewn "Neo Tokyo", felt like it has always had a wider visual language than just that one note. Feels like the city is trying to demand presence as an entity in the remake while in the originals the city was mostly just an anonymous sea of sky scrapers that was then experience though more intimate close moments.
I realise Ash is a huge fan of Akira and I can't help but think how Neo-Tokyo plays almost as a larger than life character in that film has influenced his work in this.
Compare this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB-ik-Bpl0c to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAHUWgBKsw&t=0m35s
I'd draw a line between the good scifi and the good theatre movies. There is some great scifi out there that isn't for general consumption in theatres. I'd call Akira (1988) one of the greats, but not the sort of thing I would see in a theater with a mixed group of friends.
On the other hand, I didn;t like the Matrix movies much but would have to agree that were fun in theatres. Some people found them great, but they haven't aged well imho. I saw the original Jurassic Park probably 10 times in theatres. That was a great scifi theatre movie. If it came out today I would recommend it to my friends.
GITS 2 took some patience. Totally different movie. GITS 1 blew my mind like Akira did.
I agree with all of these but have to add some, because you are missing a lot of the classics.
- Alien (talk about classic Sci-Fi Horror)
- Westworld (watch the movie before the show. Trust me)
- 2001 A Space Odyssey
- The Thing (I've only seen the old one)
- Moon
- Children of Men
- 12 Monkeys
- Gattaca
- Blade Runner
- Dark City
- Akira (anime)
- Primer (my favourite time travel film)
- Interstellar
- Black Mirror
- Psycho-Pass (anime)
And of course everyone needs to watch - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
I also still think GitS is one of the best hard-core sci-fi things ever put to video, but I've generally considered the (first) film to be the weakest bit. I still like it, in much the same way I actually like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I think people generally cut it a lot of slack if it's one of the only Anime things they've ever seen for being "weird" and "Japanese" and "artistic", when in fact I think it's generally just sort of klunky, slow, and weirdly paced.
This particularly comes out when you compare it to the TV series and the subsequent films, which are none of those things. Even when you might argue the film is trying to make a point, the TV series makes it much better. It also has contemplative moments and character pieces and shots that simply show city life and all of the things the movie has, but they are better integrated and paced much better.
YMMV of course. (There was a time when "the anime canon" was Ghost in the Shell (the movie) and Akira; there is still some residual Thou Shalt Not Criticize attitude about for those two, but not much anymore, I think. GitS does fare rather better 20 years on than Akira, which I believe modern consensus is that it is just one big mess, which I thought even when I saw it in 2001 or so. A landmark, yes, but still a mess.)
Highly, highly recommend the TV series. I'd suggest starting there (they are technically different continuities that just happen to have similar characters, so you will miss no story), and circling back around to the movie if you still want more.
It's hard to give recommendations because the stuff I read is probably not what most people would like ;-) Especially, I tend to like sports manga which is pretty far from fantasy. (Currently Yowamushi Pedal is fuelling my cycling addiction!)
I mentioned Barefoot Gen, which is a very early manga and a classic that is actually taught in Japanese schools. It's not fantasy, though. It tells the story of the author's experiences around the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
For fantasy things, Full metal alchemist is an alternate-earth scenario with magic. It is extremely good. One thing that doesn't actually fit the epic story format because it is a series of short stories is Mushishi. I highly recommend it, although I've only watched the anime. Akira is a cyber-punk, distopian future manga which is very highly acclaimed. Personally, it is not my taste, but it is excellent. Another interesting manga which has no actual heroes is Death Note. It's another one I don't like because all of the characters are really nasty, but some people really, really like it for that reason. I asked my wife (who is Japanese) for a suggestion and she mentioned Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (Legend of the Galactic Heroes). I haven't read it but Wikipedia indicates it was originally a series of novels. It seems Viz publishes both the novels and manga in English. Ghost in the Shell is a very good sci-fi manga, but I have to admit that it is years since I looked at it, so I can't really remember it.
One manga which I love is actually a baseball manga called Touch. If you read that, you will see the manga story structure very easily.
I started reading manga as a means to learn Japanese. At the time I had only a passing interest in graphic novels and comics. Over time I got quite hooked on it. But I only read in Japanese, so I tend to read things which are quite easy. There are very complex manga stories which are aimed at adults, but unfortunately I haven't spent much time looking at those things.
Of course the 2 current most popular mangas aimed at young boys is Naruto and One Piece. Naruto just finished. It has some very powerful moments and the story is quite good. I've found that there are quite a lot of useful ideas that you can take away from the story and apply to your own life. However, the characters are one-dimensional (on purpose, I think) so I suspect it wouldn't appeal to the original poster. One Piece is also quite good (the first chapter is actually really worth reading on it's own and can stand by itself even if you don't read anything else). Again, it is aimed at a young audience and the characters are very static. There are some extremely moving moments, though.
Hope that helps a bit. As I said, it's hard to give recommendations because some people will look at that list and probably absolutely hate some of the things on there. There is an unbelievably massive amount of manga being written and I truly believe there is something for every taste. However, the examples above are pretty easy to find in English and are all quite famous. If they don't meet your taste, I hope you'll explore a bit further on your own.
I too was a fansubber in the mid 90s.
It started innocently enough when I asked a friend for Akira tape and instead he gave me a badly but sufficiently subbed copy of Kimagure Orange Road from infamous quantity fansubbers Arctic Animation.
That lead to a local chapter of Cal-Animage (University of California anime club), where I eventually became an officer in charge of acquisitions and fansubbing.
At first I traded 3rd or 4th generation VHS tapes, but that was not to last.
I scoured obscure Japanese family stores in greater LA for new finds. I bought a LD player, a number of S-VHS recorders not to mention regular VHS and Beta decks.
I shelled out $500 for a Genlock for PC. I secretly envied those with Amigas whose equipment was better suited than PC.
I suppose the highlight was subbing of Evangelion episode 1. a week after a release in Japan and showing it at the club.
Reportedly I was responsible for kickstarting Fushigi Yuugi when my raw copies made it to Tomodachi Anime who were the big time fansubbers back then.
There was no money in it, most reputable fansubbers wouldn't charge more than a buck over reproduction costs and offered an option of sending in your own tapes.
Fansubbing was a team effort as it was rare for a single person to know enough Japanese and also possess the technical chops for editing/timing, producing.
Fansubbing seemed to start to die when pretty much everything seemed to be picked up by commercial companies but apparently it has never gone away.
These days I seldom watch anime, but when I do it usually is a dubbed version with my kids. And I realize that all those sub/dub wars were a bit silly.
> For example, there is a iconic concept in the US of "bad guy", "rebel against the world". It simply does not exist in Korea, or in Japan by the way. You can't talk about "bad guys"to them, because it does not exist in their world.
The Japanese are well aware of this because they've seen American movies. The word you want is ヤンキー.
Haven't you seen Akira?
It's funny that he uses Akira as an example, a movie that famously went over budget because it needed a much larger colour pallet than usual (for the night scenes).
Truly. My enjoyment of Monsters, Inc. takes nothing away from my awe of Akira.
Different movies, songs, activities for different moods, wants, desires.
It's been a tough year. So the partner and I have been watching a lot of romantic comedies. As a caveman, I'm surprised by how much I've been enjoying them.
I had learned a good amount of English by playing NES games at the age of six. I watched and understood Akira four years later. The film was in Japanese, subbed in English. Note, I don't speak a word of Japanese.
Watching English TV shows at an early age will give you an advantage later on.
I agree with this completely. In a sense, the dystopian presentation of a movie like Blade Runner or Akira feels oddly more comforting. Street venders, gangs of kids doing nothing in particular, smokers, etc. Even the cleanest, most polite scandinavian social democracy still has all these things, but they're conveniently left out of these "utopian" visions.
I think, if anything triggers our discomfort, it's the subconscious question of what happened to them.
Some films by Alain Resnais deserve to be on this list:
Je t'aime, je t'aime: a time machine experiment gone wrong. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063152/
Providence: a story told while it's being written. Sometimes the writer changes his mind, sometimes his imagination takes him where he doesn't want to go. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076574/
Smoking / No Smoking: two films that explore different possible 'forks' of the same story. The first fork is the decision by one character to smoke a cigarette. In the first film she does, in the second she doesn't. There are three or four forks in each film which all completely change the fate of the characters. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108167/
Other films that come to mind:
Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys , by Michael Haneke. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216625/
Akira has an ending just about as powerful as the ending of 2001. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/
Beyond a reasonable doubt (Fritz Lang) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049006/
(but why am I writing this on hacker news?) Vertigo (Hitchcock) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/
The Prestige (competing magicians inventing new tricks, cameo by Nikola Tesla):
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/prestige
Iron Man (fun movie where the main character is hacker/inventor):
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/ironman
There Will Be Blood (not a hacker movie per se, but still kind of startup-relevant, it's about creation of the oil empire from scratch):
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/therewillbeblood
Odyssey 5 (TV series about a group of astronauts sent back in time to prevent destruction of Earth, AI plays a significant role):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318236/
Few Japanese cyberpunk animated classics:
Ghost in the Shell 1 & 2:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347246/
Akira:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/
Bonus: if you liked Primer, you may like also Timecrimes (even though it's not a hacker movie):
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/timecrimes