In the fictional city of Neo-Tokyo. A teenage boy is exposed to a mysterious energy source and develops telekinetic powers that place him at the center of a conflict that may destroy the world.
Moments that can only be captured as animation make Akira still worth watching: gusts of wind from chopper blades, ka-tooming bursts of fiery explosions, Tetsuo's visions.
A compendium of the worst cliches of Japanese animation -- two hours of chases, laser attacks, machine-gun battles, spilled stage blood, computer-animated backgrounds and hokey dialogue.
[Akira] is a blast and a half, a twisted dystopian parable of violence and rock and roll, Japanese-style. It's Disney on PCP, mean, rotten, psychotic, but incredibly vivid.
Grade-school violence freaks may find a few kicks here, but even they may have trouble coping with this ugly movie's ending about eight separate times.
A lavish animation extravaganza produced at a cost of $8 million, this futuristic exploration is a followup by author-director Katsuhiro Otomo to his tremendously popular comic books.
Plenty of superb recent blockbusters, including The Matrix, The Dark Knight, Minority Report, Dark City and Inception, are all in its debt - not to mention a fair number of shockers, like Star Wars Episode II and the most recent Resident Evil atrocity.
While its typically convoluted sci-fi plotting and sprawling ensemble of characters occasionally lead it to border on the incoherent, it's hard not to be in awe of the giant hand-drawn cityscapes that make up the backdrop for the eye-popping action.