Akira

Animation, Anime, Science Fiction

Mitsuo Iwata	Shôtarô Kaneda
Nozomu Sasaki	Tetsuo Shima
Mami Koyama	Kei
Tesshô Genda	Ryûsaku
Hiroshi Ôtake	Nezu
Kôichi Kitamura	Priestess Miyako
Michihiro Ikemizu	Inspector
Yuriko Fuchizaki	Kaori
Masaaki Ôkura	Yamagata
Tarô Arakawa	Eiichi Watanabe

Director	Katsuhiro Otomo; Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Producer	Shunzo Kato; Ryohei Suzuki; Haruyo Kanesaku
Writer	Izo Hashimoto; Katsuhiro Otomo; Katsuhiro Ôtomo; Izô Hashimoto

Akira is a Japanese cyberpunk anime focusing on the relationships between groups of disaffected teenagers who spend most of their time fighting each other in motorcycle gangs. With copious drug references, some heavy postapocalyptic sci-fi and allusions to military conspiracies that are never fully explained, the film is tailor made for cult classic status, which is exactly what it has achieved. Without spoiling anything, it should be said that the movie feels somewhat confusing and incomplete for a very good reason: it is incomplete. The manga on which Akira is based, appropriately also titled Akira, spans several volumes hundreds of pages long, while the film is adapted only from the first volume.