It seems hard to believe that it’s been 37 years since the Japanese release of Akira, a film destined to change the course of animated cinema and open the doors of Europe and the United States to manga and anime. But… Are you sure you know EVERYTHING about this cult film? Let’s find out.
1. Alejandro Jodorowsky was passing by
Have you always found the end of the film incomprehensible? Are you out of your mind when the fight starts in the Olympic Stadium? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one.
The main problem with the ending of the 1988 film is that when it was made, the comic was still being published, and in fact, the anime was released without being able to feature some of the more interesting stuff from Otomo’s original work. So… How to finish the film if the story really had more than half of it left?
It is rumored that Katsuhiro Otomo met Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodrowsky in Paris. During the conversation, Otomo confessed his script problems to Jodrowsky and he suggested an ending: that Tetsuo transcend his human form, becoming a reality within which the characters lived. The Japanese artist liked the idea… and the rest is history.
2. Nationalism at the end of the manga
As they progress, the manga and the anime become more and more distant. In fact, in the animated film, the mysterious Akira only appears for a moment, while in the comic book he emerges among the ruins of Neo-Tokyo and becomes the central character that the title promised.
One of the most interesting ideas of the whole work consists in the unleashing of a sort of new World War, with a Japan isolated from the world and ruled by the cult of little Akira. In the end, the United States managed to reach Japanese territory, but the survivors of the catastrophe sent them away, claiming that Japan would build its own future. In the last picture we saw Kaneda and his friends on their bikes advancing towards the Rising Sun, a metaphor for the Japanese situation after World War II.
3. Akira predicted the Tokyo Olympics
When in 2013, the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2020 Games would take place in the Japanese capital, the hearts of Akira fans began to accelerate. That’s because in Otomo’s work, Tokyo was to host the Olympics in precisely THAT SAME YEAR, in 2020.
However, the nuclear explosion that destroyed part of the city put an end to that celebration, and the action takes place in a 2019 with an abandoned Olympic State under which the secrets of the Akira Project are hidden.
Yerars later, the Japanese government took advantage of this reference, and used the images of Arika in some promotional events of its Olympic Games.
4. A mysterious video game cancelled
As it usually happens with movie hits, videogame developers became interested in Otmo’s work, trying to launch videogames based on both the manga and the anime.
In 1988, the company Taito released one of those cool visual novels, so successful in Japan, for the Japanese version of the NES Famicon console. A few years later, and with the anime already triumphing all over the world, a curious game was made for the Amiga CD32, a console for the European market that never succeeded.
Later, there appeared videos and cartridges of adaptations of the CD32 game for the most famous consoles of the 90’s, but for strange reasons they were never finished.
5. Joker partners with Kaneda
If you’ve only watched the Akira animated film, you may be surprised to learn that Kaneda and Joker – the leader of the rival gang The Clowns – finally put aside their differences and team up to fight Tetsuo. After the destruction of Neo-Tokyo, Joker and other rival gangs join forces to survive.
At this point, Joker trades in his clown makeup for tire marks on his face, and uses his knowledge of mechanics to repair the gang’s motorcycles and vehicles.
