Akira – Cyberpunk ground zero

#fiction #films #anime #SF #dystopia #feminism

This year saw the remaster of critically-acclaimed Akira, probably the movie most credited with introducing anime to a Western audience. Like 1982’s Blade Runner from which it draws inspiration, Akira imagines a future so proximate that we are now living it, in this case a vision of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Remasters generate renewed interest and the potential to bring a classic to new audiences, as well as the chance for the more elderly among us to indulge in nostalgia. It also presents an opportunity for a critical contemporary reappraisal of art that, by virtue of the passage of time, has taken on a second nature as representative of a specific cultural and historical context from which it is ever further removed. Such reappraisals have seen some movies retroactively acquire cult status, while others have fallen from grace and found themselves relegated to the dust heap of history.

Akira appears however to have escaped such re-evaluations, with recent reviews generally reaffirming its cult status and importance to the cultural exchange between Japan and the West, in particular with regards to animation. This is a missed opportunity given both Akira’s richness and its historical and cultural specificity, which should provide plenty of stimulating touchpoints for dialogue with our present moment, especially considering our dystopian zeitgeist and the enduring popularity of the cyberpunk genre. A film that dared to imagine our present moment deserves better than being engaged only in terms of its cultural legacy.

Akira follows the exploits of Kaneda, leader of motorcycle gang the Capsules, as he finds himself and his gang in the crosshairs of a covert military research effort to create humans with psychic abilities (dubbed ‘espers’). A collision with an escaped esper imbues one of Kaneda’s gang members, Tetsuo, with psychic powers, resulting in him summarily being whisked away by Colonel Shikishima to a secret military facility for experimentation. Kaneda’s resolution to free his friend sees him join forces with Kei, a revolutionary, whose cell intends to liberate the espers. What follows is a chaotic crescendo of violence as the hubris of men inexorably raises the stakes, resulting in an epic final stand off between Kaneda and Tetsuo at the construction site for Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic Stadium, by which point large swathes of Neo-Tokyo have already been laid waste and the civilian casualties have mounted into their thousands.

The titular Akira himself is not so much a character as the loop around which the movie’s story is wound, functioning both as the point of origin of the movie’s events and their resolution. Though absent, he is the centre of gravity for many of the movie’s protagonists. For some of Neo-Tokyo’s denizens he is an object of cult worship, for the remaining espers a quest for transcendence, for Tetsuo his last hope of controlling his spiralling psychic powers, and for colonel Shikishima a dangerous secret to be supressed.

Both aesthetically and narratively Akira is a tour de force. We start with the high-octane energy of Kaneda’s futuristic motorcycle gang having it out with their rivals, and the movie sustains this frenetic pace until the credits roll. Its visuals embody the gold standard of 1980s Japanese animation, rendering the cyberpunk world of Neo-Tokyo in exquisite detail and its inhabitants with a vital energy. With the notable exception of mechas and kaiju, Akira is a catalogue of futuristic anime staples, from secret government programmes to towering skyscrapers and thinly-veiled references to nuclear destruction. If much of it feels familiar, it is because of how this movie inspired so much of what followed.

Even in the background details, there is a richness and depth that suffuses the film, never leaving the viewer in doubt that there is much more to this world than we get to see. We get snippets of debates in smoke-filled council chambers suggestive of political wranglings that are never explored. Exchanges between NPCs that are there purely as scenery convince us that Neo-Tokyo is filled with people living their own lives, wholly unrelated and oblivious to the unfolding story. Our protagonists come with their implied backstories to which minimal exposition is devoted. All this leaves us with the impression that all we get is a glimpse into this sprawling, chaotic, complex world.

That complex chaos is one aspect of Akira that diverges from many contemporary cyberpunk dystopias. Akira’s central dystopian anxiety is that of chaos and decay, not calamitous collapse or totalitarian control. Neo-Tokyo is a complex system disintegrating under the weight of its own internal contradictions where nobody is in command, and any attempts to exercise control only serves to destabilise the system further. The overriding sense is of a lack of order, apart from what groups such as the Capsules can locally impose, and this is further reinforced by the alienating effects of the inchoate storyline and the soundtrack. Contrary to the claustrophobic control of Silo or The Ten Percent Thief, the chaos in Akira is expansive, too big to contain. And unlike the external collapse of Interstellar or Oryx & Crake, in Akira it is the inherent instability of the society itself that is maintaining it in a state of permanent implosion.

If the rampant chaos and decay are one way by which Akira signals the dystopian status of Neo-Tokyo, the treatment of women is another. Using overt oppression of women as the signifier for dystopia is common, and while it can be done well (most famously in The Handmaid's Tale), Akira's uncritical use of this trope is problematic. Akira features three main female characters: Tetsuo’s girlfriend Kaori, revolutionary Kei, and esper Kiyoko. Kaori’s role is primarily to suffer. Early on in the movie an ill-fated escape attempt with Tetsuo sees her brutally physically and sexually assaulted. Rendered in Akira’s signature vivid style, the harrowing scene is compounded by the suspicion that the (presumed male) audience is meant to find the half-naked and violated Kaori vaguely titillating. Kaori’s only other key appearance is at the movie’s finale, where her ineffectual attempt to calm an out-of-control Tetsuo leads to him crushing her to death. Kaori is easily the most innocent and caring character in the film, and the only one who sees that Tetsuo needs compassion, not machismo. But in Neo-Tokyo, empathy is a fatal liability punishable by death.

Kei’s portrayal is much more sympathetic, and as a revolutionary she has significantly more agency than Kaori. Nonetheless, she is gradually eclipsed by Kaneda even though of the two she ought to be the more capable warrior. Her flaw is a tendency to think before she acts, unlike Kaneda who blunders into situations but surmounts them through sheer force of will. This disempowerment begins shortly after the two characters meet, when Kei’s disinterest in Kaneda’s flirtatious overtures immediately results in an aggressively abusive response from the latter. This is portrayed not as a flaw in our hero, but as an acceptable if maybe somewhat immature way for a man to express frustration at the rejection of his advances towards an attractive woman, and will be painfully recognisable to any female viewers. Akira avoids a a standard romantic arc for Kei and Kaneda after this inauspicious start, but we are nonetheless to understand that Kaneda's boisterous energy and dedication to Tetsuo gradually win Kei over.

Kiyoko, finally, is probably the most effective of the three espers. But while her two male counterparts are depicted as miniature adults, Kiyoko retains the trappings of a little girl, stuck in a slightly bizarre and unsettling father/daughter relationship with colonel Shikishima.

Between them these three characters are undeniably instrumental to the resolution of the story, and the organised, capable and thoughtful Kei in particular contrasts positively with loose-cannon goofball Kaneda. Over the course of the film however, the agency of the female characters progressively erodes, and combined with overt violence against women as an indicator of the dystopian nature of Neo-Tokyo, a latent misogyny suffuses the movie. One might argue that this is simply reflective of the movie’s times, were it not for the fact that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind came out four years before Akira, proving that dystopian anime with a much more positive female depictions was eminently possible.

A potential counterargument here is that the entire movie could be interpreted as at least in part a critique of toxic masculinity. It is after all propelled by Kaneda and Tetsuo’s inability to express their friendship other than through competition and violent one-upmanship, and it is the incessant desire of men to obtain power and exercise control that pushes Neo-Tokyo deeper and deeper into crisis. Multiple times characters choose coercion and anger over compassion and understanding, fuelling the spiral of violence until it comes to a catastrophic terminus. In this sense, Akira falls squarely in the ‘things men do to avoid going to therapy’ category, although in fairness it seems likely that in Neo-Tokyo mental health services are even more eviscerated than they are in austerity Britain. In the end, Akira doesn't have the self-awareness to pull off this critique, as it does not manage to point at any alternatives, but rather forecloses them as it did with Kaori’s brutal death. At its heart, Akira is too excited about being a movie for boys about boys doing boy things, with fast motorcycles and big explosions.

None of this invalidates Akira’s status as an iconic and historically significant movie, nor detract from the its exquisite craftsmanship, raucously immersive story, and its dystopian critique. It is nonetheless intriguing that its overwhelming spectacle appears to have stunned contemporary reviews into a mere reaffirmation of the cult status we already knew Akira possessed, preventing engagement with aspects of the movie that have aged for better or worse. With nearly forty years between now and the movie’s release, it feels like an opportunity was missed to more critically evaluate Akira and ask what it can offer those who live in the future it sought to anticipate, as well as which of its cultural descendants may have transcended their source material.

Notes & Suggestions

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