Movie Review

AKIRA Akira Peter Bond

Cities come and go, sometimes in an instant.

Early in 1988’s Akira, Tokyo is destroyed in a great flash of light. Japan rebuilds, and the movie takes us into Neo-Tokyo. The city has returned but has changed. Reborn as a city of towering skylines, grimy streets and citizens either turned violent or numb. The military enforces its will on the street, and the government hides deep away working towards its own preservation. One city destroyed, and a new city made. Otomo Katsuhiro’s drove this 1988 film adaptation of his own manga. It had a massive influence on science fiction, Japanese cyberpunk and left a mark as a piece of adult animation. The film follows Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang and his friend Tetsuo. Tetsuo acquires psychic abilities and the film spins out from there.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instantly invoked in this film, and run as a throughline throughout it. 66 Early on as we see Tokyo destroyed, one can not help but think of those two cities. As the plot continues and we learn more about Akira, his power and that explosion the film starts to ask us about this power. How do we relate to science? To technology? Can we learn from our mistakes? If we don’t learn, there is a cost to pay. The film lays that out clear in its stunning finale.

After our mistakes, how do we rebuild?

If a city is destroyed in an instant, who defines what it’s rebirth looks like?

What values take root in this new city? Neo-Tokyo is a city that has not learned the lessons of the past, has not learned what it should have. It is the future, but it is not a future most of us want. So is it progress?

In a way, the city has been reborn, there is a great flourishing of both technology and economy. But Is this the progress you want? Who is this progress for? Who benefits from this progress? What ideas are progressing in this city? Like any good science fiction, here the future is the present. We live in Neo-Tokyo today. Questions about our relationship to both the modern and the newest technology abound. Our cities

THE AKITAN and societies progress through time, and some ideas progress through them and others do not. If we are not able to learn from our mistakes, they will proceed into our futures.

What happens when these mistakes are our own and they are what brought out cities to destruction in the first place? If we let the same values take root again, if we exploit the same technologies, the same people, the same planet, in all the same ways, we will be doomed in a cycle of self-destruction. If we define our progress into the future, we must reckon with our pasts.