The setting is Neo-Tokyo in 2019, 31 years after a mysterious explosion destroyed the city. A biker gang member named Kaneda tries to save his childhood friend Tetsuo from a government program. The program has awakened catastrophic psychic powers within Tetsuo. Katsuhiro Otomo's film is the founding work of animated science fiction as serious cinema.
Akira is a 1988 animation and science fiction film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (2 editing, 1 psychology and 1 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Run Lola Run uses several of the same techniques.
Using animation, for a whole film or for short sequences inside live action, to make emotions hit harder. Drawn images can show inner feelings that realistic footage can't reach.
How this film uses it
Otomo's animation shows psychic power as a physical substance. Matter warps, bodies mutate and consciousness tears the city's infrastructure apart. In 1988, only animation could put these images on screen. Because the medium can show impossible destruction, the film's apocalyptic scale is literally there to see.
Where to see it
Tetsuo's mutation sequence. The body horror is drawn with an anatomical detail that animation can achieve and live-action can't. The transformation feels scientifically observed and gut-level horrifying at once.
Showing the human body being changed, damaged or falling apart. The horror works because you imagine it happening to your own body, and it often stands for mental suffering.
How this film uses it
Tetsuo's psychic awakening is staged as body horror, a kind of horror built on the body being grotesquely changed. His flesh expands beyond control and consumes everything within its radius. That grotesque transformation of a human body is the film's main image for power the mind can't contain.
Where to see it
Tetsuo's final mutation in the stadium. The biological matter expands without limit, and the horror of unchecked power becomes literal flesh. The film's apocalypse is a portrait of a teenage boy who couldn't hold what he had been given.
Shooting a city with washed-out color, heavy shadow, rain-slick streets and decaying buildings, often at night. The city looks corrupt and threatening, and it dwarfs the people in it.
How this film uses it
Otomo's Neo-Tokyo is a masterpiece of animated urban gothic, which means a city drawn as dark and threatening. It's neon-soaked, rain-slicked and under military curfew. The city's infrastructure is spectacular and menacing at the same time. The whole place is a portrait of a society that has rebuilt without healing.
Where to see it
The opening motorcycle chase through Neo-Tokyo. You see the city's neon and darkness, its controlled zones and its lawless back streets. The layout of the city matches the politics of a society 31 years past catastrophe.
Timing the cuts to the rhythm of the action or the music. The fast, precise editing gives a scene momentum you can almost feel physically.
How this film uses it
The action sequences (the motorcycle chase, the military pursuit, the psychic combat) are cut with an urgency that animation had never had before. The editing gives you speed, and you still always know where everything is. The cuts build momentum on their own.
Where to see it
The opening motorcycle race through the empty highway. The editing cuts between the riders, the road and the city at night. The pace made animation feel capable of the physical energy of action cinema.
Questions
Akira: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Akira use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Akira (1988): Animation as Emotional Amplifier, Body Horror, Urban Gothic Cinematography and Kinetic Editing.
Who directed Akira?
Katsuhiro Otomo directed Akira, released in 1988.
What films are similar to Akira?
Films that share techniques with Akira include Run Lola Run (1998), The French Connection (1971), Whiplash (2014), Black Swan (2010).
