Yalaa said:It's seriously nothing but loud teenagers with lots of shooting and explosions. How was I ever impressed by this garbage? lol Well said.
The first time I watched Akira, it was because it was recommended to me as something great. This was back around probably 2007 or earlier. I couldn't empathize with the characters and thought the plot was muddled. I also expected to see science fiction, but in my view magic mental powers are strictly fantasy (despite how they used to be thought of as SF). But I'm generally fine with fantasy and magic and stuff, so maybe I just came in expecting hard SF and was disappointed because of my prior expectations or an SF-focused bias... kind of like how the first time I watched The Fifth Element, I was expecting serious SF, not a spoof, so I hated it.
Years later, I rewatched Akira, hoping that my experience would be similar to my second viewing of The Fifth Element: knowing more what to expect, I really enjoyed that film. Sadly, not so with Akira. I hoped that there would be more there in terms of small details of the writing, more show-vs.-tell for me to discover and interpret, more depth of the story and themes and characterization.
But Akira still fell flat for me. The writing still felt muddled, the psychic powers still seemed silly (but admittedly not as bad as they seemed during my first viewing), and the characters still struck me as completely unsympathetic. The film was really not enjoyable. I sat through it mainly from a sense of duty and not because I was having a good time. It was a slog.
I appreciate and respect the film's place in anime history: It deserves accolades for really bringing the West into the genre. And it did some impressive things with its cinematography and sound design for its time.
But those aren't the kinds of things by themselves that make me want to watch a film again and again. Give me something instead like Howl's Moving Castle, something with rich writing and complex characters with whom I can empathize despite their flaws (or perhaps because of them).
Give me something like Mushoku Tensei (admittedly a series, not a film), which uses its violence purposefully, in ways that make total sense and that advance both plot and characterization, not gratuitously because exploding bodies and extreme blood spatter are supposed to look cool.
Give me something like Yoru wa Mijikashi Arukeyo Otome: sure, it might be more focused on expressionist rather than realistic storytelling, and might have had characters that are more ideas than genuinely realized people, and might just be an example of style over substance--it might not even have had the most realistic ending--but at least it ended with me thinking "huh, that was ... kind of weird, but I enjoyed it and would probably watch it again with a friend."
Give me something, Akira. Give me something better than... you. sigh!
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