Akira (1998)
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
21 November 1929
2 August 1969, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
12 May 1958, San Juan, Puerto Rico
27 July 1956, Los Angeles County, California, USA
20 November 1965, Saitama, Japan
14 June 1954, East Meadow, Long Island, New York, USA
24 July 1955, Nagoya, Japan
12 November 1965, Hollywood, California, USA
2 June 1924, Chicago, Illinois, USA
8 December 1966, Los Angeles, California, USA
22 October 1958, USA
11 August 1951, Suginami, Tokyo, Japan
5 December 1968, Tokyo, Japan
22 December 1951, USA
26 January 1971, Encino, California, USA
28 December 1935, Evanston, Illinois, USA
27 May 1992, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
23 March 1958, Burbank, California, USA
March 15, 2013
Extremely violent classic introduced anime to Westerners.January 12, 2012
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.June 25, 2011
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.July 18, 2013
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.April 16, 2007
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.July 04, 2015
Handsome and preposterously ambitious, and even its worst narrative missteps are a factor of that ambition.April 16, 2007
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.April 10, 2013
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.April 10, 2013
[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.September 07, 2008
The movie, even at 124 minutes, has the densely packed sweep and go-for-it pep of a pop epic.February 09, 2006
An impressive achievement, often suggesting a weird expressionist blend of 2001, The Warriors, Blade Runner and Forbidden Planet.April 10, 2013
Pounding away, it becomes monotonous.