Akira

[Chedney Honks]

KANEDAAAAAAAAA

TETSUOOOOOOOOO

[Operty1]

'Just when my coil was reaching the green line'

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The music is amazing.

[Non Stop Dancer]

The best rap song about Akira https://youtu.be/HtW-qYBErOI

[magval]

The best film, this.

Favourite line in the original US dub is Yamagata saying "that... PEA brain". Awful delivery, terribly recorded. Far prefer that dub to the 2002 one but Japanese is the only way to go on this one. One of a handful of films I've done every format with - first saw it on a borrowed tape recorded off the BBC (with subtitles for the road and shop signs, which I think subsequent versions never bothered with), then bought the VHS, the first UK black DVD, then the two-case DVD, then the first blu-ray, then the subsequent blu-ray which reinstated that old UK dub. Finally saw it in that tiny wee cinema in Birmingham a few years ago and noticed other people were delighted by some of the same tiny details as me. Spose if it's out on 4K I'll have to buy that too.

Same with the soundtrack on CD and vinyl. Bought and read the manga twice. Sent a copy of volume 1 to madhair. I fucking love it and I want everyone else to, too, because it's the best.

[The Mollusk]

Favourite line in the original US dub is Yamagata saying "that... PEA brain". Awful delivery, terribly recorded.

I don't know which dub I've seen but there's a similarly fuck-awful bit where the kids are booting off at Tetsuo in the playroom and one of them says "Hey you, you're a cretin!" (pronounced cree-tin) before dishing out an attack. That'll be stuck in my head forever.

[Cuntbeaks]

The original Japanese dub or GTFO.

Anyone tried watching it on acid or shrooms?

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

but the original US dub has Leonardo

anybody read Bartkira?

[magval]

but the original US dub has Leonardo

anybody read Bartkira?

He's also Liquid Snake, dear brother.

Does Bartkira actually change anything or is it just a copy and paste effort? The bits I looked through were just existing Akira panels redrawn.

[The Mollusk]

Does Bartkira actually change anything or is it just a copy and paste effort? The bits I looked through were just existing Akira panels redrawn.

It is that, but that doesn't make it "copy and paste" at all. It's an incredible work, probably hundreds of different artists each recreating a few pages to make an enormous tapestry which also happens to be a recreation of "Akira". Each individual artist's take is bold and interesting, even if you're not into the Simpsons I'd imagine it's a really engaging project. I'm a big fan of it.

[magval]

Don't mean to belittle it by asking that, just wondered if at some stage it became its own thing.

Like the band Fozzy. Started out as a cover band, doing covers, with a name that was one letter extra to the most famous metal singer ever. Now they're a successful act in their own right.

Or that business about Fifty Shades starting out as Twilight fan fiction, or whatever it was.

So it's basically a cover version of Akira with Simpsons characters?

All six books?

[Cuellar]

Never seen it. Any good?

[Chedney Honks]

KANEDAAAAAAAAA

TETSUOOOOOOOOO

You tell me.

You tell me.

[Shit Good Nose]

Never seen it. Any good?

Amazing.

But it's 50/50 as to whether it'll click and you'll "get" it.  And it doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with one's intellectual capacity either - I've known complete dumbasses that have easily picked it up and ran with the story, whilst others I would consider as having higher-than-average intelligence were left scratching their heads not having a fucking clue what to make of it.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Baffled as to how anyone could be confused by it

Its basically the same story and a child would make playing with godzillas

[Sin Agog]

It all just plays like one big chase scene after another to me.  My trouble with the pacing might have something to do with condensing such a huge manga, but then I've always liked Nausicaa and that does the same thing.

Of course Geinoh Yamashirogumi's always amazing.

[The Mollusk]

Don't mean to belittle it by asking that, just wondered if at some stage it became its own thing.

So it's basically a cover version of Akira with Simpsons characters?

All six books?

I'm not sure how far they took it but I would assume that they recreated the whole thing. I read the first book (it's all online to cop for free) and it definitely had the ambitious scope of a completist project.

And yeah I guess it is a cover version, but it's a really dazzling and fresh cover version like The Slits doing "Heard It Through the Grapevine". The original(s) are obvs amazing but you hear The Slits and you go ahh fuckinell mate YES TURN THAT SHIT UP AND GET IT INSIDE ME

[El Unicornio, mang]

I think they did a good job of condensing the 6 volumes/2000+ pages of the manga into the film, but they are pretty different. The film is basically just volume 1 and the end of volume 6. The manga goes into Tetsuo's empire with Akira (who is only seen briefly in the film) at his side, and covers in detail a lot of other themes and subplots involving politics and Japanese society. And it's just a technical marvel, I'm assuming Otomo had a team helping him with the drawings because the detail in the drawings is astounding

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

So it's basically a cover version of Akira with Simpsons characters?

All six books?

Yes. All six books. I've read the whole thing.

Damn COVID for cancelling the Olympics. Now we'll never know if they'd have played Kaneda while a cosplayer on a motorbike lit the Olympic flame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB6Ch_VAfIk

[Chedney Honks]

I think the opening motorcycle scene with the layered cityscape is one of the most iconic and stunning passages in all cinema. The soundtrack is astonishing, like little else, and the blazing tail lights are so good I got a Covid mask printed with them on.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It was a stroke of genius to use that unique style of music, rather than the typical cheesy 80s rock you'd expect, hasn't dated at all.

[magval]

Worth remembering (just off the back of the talk above of condensing the manga into the film) that the film was finished and released years before the strip came to an end which is why they're so different. Quite a mental undertaking really.

[Chedney Honks]

Worth remembering (just off the back of the talk above of condensing the manga into the film) that the film was finished and released years before the strip came to an end which is why they're so different. Quite a mental undertaking really.

I knew it came out before the end of the manga but I had assumed that it was already written or storyboarded. That's pretty amazing how well they work both separately and together.

[Mister Six]

I think the opening motorcycle scene with the layered cityscape is one of the most iconic and stunning passages in all cinema. The soundtrack is astonishing, like little else, and the blazing tail lights are so good I got a Covid mask printed with them on.

Yeah, I watched the film on BluRay last month, having only seen it once before in the 90s when it was on Videodrome or something (and even then I think my dad wouldn't let me watch it past the bit where Tetsuo's girlfriend almost gets raped) and it was absolutely jaw-dropping. Not just the chase, but the interweaving of the other threads - the guy trying to get the psychic kid to safety, the scene afterwards with the attempted suicide bomber that concludes with some random(ish) explosion going off in the background... an incredible sense of place and time, so fucking confident in everything it's doing, even though Otomo had only directed a couple of segments for some anthology films released the year before.

I think it dips a little bit after that, and the stuff with Kaneda finding the rebels, the sewer shoot-out and the arrival at the psychic kids' playroom is a little conventional and laggy, and clearly working hard to get all the pieces in the right place for the ending. But what a goddamn ending! Tetsuo on the Olympic "throne", Kaneda being both cool as fuck and an arrogant bratty teen, the orbital satellite, the mad tumor-Tetuso... it's not quite up there with the opening, but it's amazing.

Surprised how coherent it was too, after spending the 90s hearing everyone say how weird it is. I wonder if it's because I used the 2000s dub. Does that have a clearer script?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The translation on the DVD is definitely clearer than the version I saw on the BBC in the '90s. The plot is clear enough in both, but most of the dialogue explaining the origin of the shriveled kids and their mind powers was garbled in the older version, which left me thinking I'd missed important details that weren't actually there.

[Mister Six]

That's probably it, then. Cheers!

[Sebastian Cobb]

I once saw Taxi Driver, Candyman and Akira in a cinema on the same day.

I had a few spliffs and pints with a mate between Taxi and the other two, which is probably why the lady in the ticket office thought I asked for 'Candyman with a carer'. It also turned out Candyman featured a q&a with Bernard Rose beforehand, which being unexpected made me prang.

But looking back what a good day.

[Mister Six]

Woah, that's a good cinema.

[greenman]

Worth remembering (just off the back of the talk above of condensing the manga into the film) that the film was finished and released years before the strip came to an end which is why they're so different. Quite a mental undertaking really.

Although it was a good way into the manga which ran from 82-91 were as Nausicaa was made fairly early on in the manga which didnt finish until a decade latter and had shifted quite considerably in story focus/tone by the end.

[Dex Sawash]

Hips don't lie is alright