Akira Following up on the apparent death reports of the live-action Akira project, executive producer Andrew Lazar confirmed that Warner Bros. has made the adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s epic dystopian saga a priority when speaking to if Magazine during Comic-Con International this past weekend. He also confirmed that the studio was working on a script, but wasn’t aiming for a release before 2011, which makes sense given the prior timeframes that were previously reported were much too accelerated for such a large scale production.
source: animenewsbiz
Akira (アキラ?) is a 1988 anime film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his hit manga. The film is set in a futuristic and post-war city, Neo-Tokyo, in 2019. While most of the character designs and basic settings were adapted from the original 2,182-page manga epic, the restructured plot of the movie differs considerably from the print version, pruning much of the last half of the manga.
Plot summary
In 1988, Tokyo is destroyed by an apparent nuclear explosion that leads to the start of World War III. Thirty-one years later, the new city, Neo-Tokyo, a megalopolis built on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, and its leaders in the Supreme Executive Council, are hampered to the breaking point by political strife, anti-government terrorism, and gang violence. Shotaro Kaneda leads his motorcycle gang (called the Capsules in the manga but never mentioned in the anime), including Yamagata, Kaneda’s right-hand man, Kai, and Tetsuo Shima, Kaneda’s best friend, in a gang war with another biker gang called the Clowns. As Kaneda and Tetsuo battle a pair of Clowns on a highway, Tetsuo almost runs into a child with wizened features (Takashi) and is injured when his bike suddenly explodes. Tetsuo and the child are taken away by armed soldiers. Kaneda and his gang are taken in for questioning, where Kaneda unsuccessfully flirts with a young girl named Kei. Kaneda, Kei, and the remaining Capsules are later released.
Tetsuo, under watch by Colonel Shikishima and Doctor Onishi, is discovered to have mental frequencies similar to Akira, a boy with enormous, even monstrous, and essentially god-like, mental abilities. Akira was the cause of the explosion that started World War III thirty-one years earlier, in 1988. Aware that another gifted child, Kiyoko, has had visions of Neo-Tokyo’s destruction in the same horrific manner, the Colonel orders the doctor to kill Tetsuo should he run amok with his own ever-growing powers. Tetsuo escapes and meets up with his girlfriend Kaori and steals Kaneda’s motorcycle. They are attacked by Clowns who attempt to rape and murder Kaori, but Kaneda and the gang show up and defeat the Clowns. As Kaneda helps Tetsuo and Kaori recover, and Tetsuo is attempting to beat a Clown left behind to death, Tetsuo begins to suffer a very painful hallucination and experience horrifying headache of falling and of his organs spills out. A government van monitoring him arrives to take him away, refusing to answer Kaneda’s questions. Later that evening, Kaneda sees Kei, helps her avoid arrest, and goes with her to the Resistance headquarters. Kaneda offers to help after they unintentionally reveal their plan to him to infiltrate the hospital that Tetsuo was taken to.
That night, Tetsuo is attacked by the three Espers, Takashi, Kiyoko and Masaru, who are trying to kill him before he grows accustomed to his new powers. However, this only makes his powers manifest further, and he uses it to kill a doctor and damage the hospital in his attempts to find them. In the Espers’ room, Tetsuo learns that Akira was a young boy with similar powers, now in cryogenic storage below the new Stadium being built for the upcoming 2020 Olympics, and that he may be able to help Tetsuo remove his pain. The Colonel, Kei, and Kaneda, converging on the Espers’ room, learn that Tetsuo is heading for the Stadium to meet Akira. Kei and Kaneda are detained, but Kiyoko, speaking through Kei, explains that Tetsuo must be stopped, and helps them escape. That night, Tetsuo attacks his fellow gang members, killing Yamagata for whom he harbored a bitter hatred. He then departs for the stadium. Tetsuo fends off attacks by the army, including a helicopter, a tank, and soldiers using laser rifles, on his way to the Olympic Stadium. At the Stadium, Tetsuo unearths the Akira chamber during a fight with Kei, who’s secretly being controlled by the Espers, and after winning the fight and knocking her out, finds it empty except for Akira’s organs stored in glass jars. Kaneda, having learned of Yamagata’s death from Kai, uses Tetsuo’s moment of confusion to fight him with a laser rifle, but Tetsuo is able to block the attacks. The Colonel tries to shoot Tetsuo using an orbital laser weapon called SOL-740 (Satellite Orbiting Laser), but manages only to sever his right arm. Tetsuo takes off into orbit and destroys the weapon, then spends the night recovering at the Stadium, psychically forging himself a new arm from inorganic material. His girlfriend Kaori arrives and tries to calm him down as his powers create immense physical pain.
The Colonel pleads with Tetsuo to return to the lab, but Tetsuo, remembering the Espers, horrified at how they had changed and been crippled, and frightened of the same thing happening to him, attacks the Colonel. When the Colonel fires back, with Kaneda (protected by the Espers) joining the fray, Tetsuo is unable to keep control any longer, and his body begins to transform into a gigantic mass that crushes and kills Kaori. The Espers, watching from afar, realize the only way to stop Tetsuo is to call forth Akira, his life force contained in the body parts in the chamber under the stadium. Akira’s manifestation causes another explosion, and the Espers teleport the Colonel to safety. Studying the wavelengths of the explosion, Doctor Ōnishi concludes that it is the beginning of the universe and shortly after dies when the explosion vanishes and the inrush of air destroys his van and crushes him to death. In spite of Kiyoko and Masaru’s insistence that trying to save Kaneda alone would be futile, Takashi jumps into the ever-expanding psychic field. Despite the danger of not being able to return, Kiyoko and Masaru agree to join Takashi and sacrifice themselves to save Kaneda, and also enter the field. Kaneda experiences Tetsuo’s and the Espers’ memories, including how much Tetsuo trusted Kaneda as a friend and how the children obtained their powers. The Espers remove Kaneda from the field and tell him that Akira will be taking Tetsuo “away” and to find somewhere safe to ride out the explosion. The explosion engulfs nearly the whole of Neo-Tokyo, and when it shrinks and, finally, vanishes, leaves a void that is quickly filled by the nearby ocean. Kaneda wakes up to find that Kei and Kai are safe, and they drive away from the ruined stadium and the dead city. The credits begin with a Big Bang and Tetsuo saying three last words, “I am Tetsuo”.
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