Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira is a masterpiece not only of anime but of the entire sci-fi
genre.
Along with Ghost in the Shell, Akira is responsible for introducing anime to the west and the
overwhelming popularity of the style that followed.
Even now, over 30 years after its release in 1988, Akira is still one of the most beloved
anime movies of all time.
What most people don’t realize is just how unusual and ambitious the movie’s production
was for anime at the time.
Ôtomo’s massive vision didn’t end with the story itself–the Akira movie would push
animation to unprecedented heights.
But how was Ôtomo able to bring this massive vision to life and why does Akira remain one
of the highest-quality uses of the medium?
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Akira was based on Ôtomo’s best-selling manga of the same name (Empire).
The popularity of the manga no doubt helped get the movie greenlit, but another perhaps
more important factor had to do with Japan’s economy during the 1980s.
Between 1986 and 1991 Japan was experiencing an economic bubble of greatly inflated “real
estate and stock market prices” (Bubble Economy Wiki).
It seemed like Japan’s economy was going to overtake the Western World and we can see
this fear depicted in several western-made movies during this time.
McFly!
Fujitsu-san, Konnichiwa!
However, the bubble burst in 1992 and “Japan’s economy stagnated” (Bubble Economy Wiki).
Luckily, Akira was made right in the middle of this boom, and another feature of the bubble
was that companies were investing in anime, which allowed Ôtomo to secure a large budget
to complete his vision (Bubble Economy Wiki).
The movie’s budget was 1.1 billion yen, which was equivalent to about $10 million
dollars (Empire).
It was the most expensive anime ever produced at the time (BFI 56).
The scale of the production required collaboration between several different media companies
and animation studios, which were collectively called “The Akira Committee” (BFI 56).
Ôtomo adapted his own manga with the help of Izô Hashimoto.
Taking into account differences in the mediums of manga and film, he made significant changes,
including a new ending (BFI 57).
Katsuhiro Ôtomo: “Anyway, I’d write out one or two volumes in minute detail.
But by the end, I’d just write the basic image.
For the most part, I did follow this as I went along.
I’m not really sure how many pages it comes to now.
It has to be about 2,000, I guess.”
Ôtomo had a bit of experience as a director already; he had directed the “Construction
Cancellation Order” segment of the three-part anime movie “Neo Tokyo,” which was released
in 1987 (Forbes, Neo Tokyo IMDB).
Ôtomo had also been a cinephile from a young age, and would travel three hours by train
to see the latest movies when he was in high school (Empire).
This was in the early seventies, during the American New Hollywood movement, and Ôtomo’s
love of movies was formed by classics like Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, and Bonnie and
Clyde (Shonen Sunday).
In an interview, Ôtomo said, “New Cinema films were full of weird people, as opposed
to heroes.
This had an extraordinary impact on me” (Shonen Sunday).
New Hollywood movies drew Ôtomo to outsiders, and he suggested in the same interview that
they may have even influenced his sense of himself as a “contrarian,” saying “It
must've been about this time that my contrarian character came to the fore (laughs).
New Cinema films were stories in which basically, the main characters are wanderers.
Maybe I was attracted to that lifestyle; in any case, I wanted access to my beloved films
whenever I felt like it; I wanted to get to know the crew that were drawing for COM, and
I wanted to see the world, so on graduating I moved straight to Tokyo” (Shonen Sunday).
Ôtomo’s vision for Akira was significantly more ambitious and cinematic than was usual
for anime at the time, and he drew a lot of inspiration from his love of movies.
More importantly, he refused to cut corners to save time and money like other animes normally
did.
Ôtomo was very hands-on throughout the whole process and he personally storyboarded the
entire movie before shooting began.
He did this for all 783 scenes, which ultimately became 2,122 shots (BFI 57).
In a way, it was also during this process that Ôtomo edited the movie.
Katsuhiro Ôtomo: “I draw a tremendous number of boards.
I actually draw every possible scene that could appear in the movie.
Then I begin to cut out the ones that aren’t absolutely necessary.
You really have to finish your film on storyboard first.
You can’t edit after you’ve shot a lot of extra film like in live-action.
I really put most of my energy into this phase because I knew it would help every other part
of the production.”
Ôtomo chose to use high-quality techniques and materials to rival any Hollywood movie.
Akira was filmed in 70mm––almost three and a half times larger than the standard
35mm film stock (BFI 56).
Ôtomo’s approach stood in contrast to most animation, which has a long history of cutting
corners for the sake of cost and time.
Hanna-Barbera––the studio behind many classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry and The
Flintstones––famously would repeat backgrounds and animate only a character’s head rather
than the whole body (TV Tropes).
And new technology has typically meant new ways to cut corners.
Disney began using a process of xeroxing pencil sketches onto animation cells for 101 Dalmations,
bypassing the hand-inking process entirely (Collider).
This is why the movie has such a unique look compared to other Disney animated movies.
The technology arguably saved Disney’s animation studio from collapse (Collider).
Of course, Ôtomo would use traditional cel animation, where each frame is hand-drawn
onto a cellulose acetate sheet and then photographed, but a major difference in how Akira was animated
versus other animes, particularly TV animes, was that Akira was filmed at a full twenty-four
frames per second (BFI 57).
TV animes often will be filmed at much lower frame rates to save costs, as low as twelve
or sometimes even eight frames per second (BFI 57).
Because of this, the movement in Akira is much more realistic looking by comparison
(BFI 57).
Some scenes were even shot in true slow-motion, meaning that they used an even higher frame
rate to capture as much motion as possible so it will be clear and detailed when slowed
down, the same way that live-action slow motion is shot (BFI 57).
Altogether, there were more than 160,000 individual frames used in the movie––that’s over
double the number used for most Hollywood animated movies (BFI 58).
Ôtomo also refused to “cheat” any movement like many animes at the time did, like panning
over still images or only animating the main characters while the background is motionless
(BFI 62).
The movie even uses a little bit of CGI, which was still a new technology at the time (BFI
60).
It was used mainly for artistic purposes, which you can most clearly see in the psychic
wave patterns the scientist uses to study Tetsuo and Akira (BFI 60).
Akira was the first Japanese production to use prescoring, a technique where the actors
record their lines before the animation process begins so that animators can base their work
on the actors’ performances (BFI 58).
Kaneda!
That’s Mister Kaneda to you, punk!
Die!
Prescoring had been around since the 1930s, but it was a highly unusual practice for anime
because it is more time-consuming and expensive than having the actors try to match the animation
(BFI 58).
Ôtomo was adamant that the lip-sync needed to be perfect, especially in the close-ups,
and he succeeded––all scenes in the movie have accurate lip-synching (BFI 58).
What’s with you?
You just come back from a funeral?
A key advantage to prescoring was the freedom it allowed the actors (BFI 58).
Experienced voice actors would be in the habit of adjusting themselves to match the picture,
so Ôtomo purposefully cast relatively unknown actors because he wanted unrestrained, dynamic
performances (BFI 58).
You tried to mess with me…I’m gonna kill you!
Katsuhiro Ôtomo: “Eventually, I ended up using a lot of new and unknown voice talents.
In this film, as you know, we use the pre-recording system.
I did this because I expected the voice actors to create their own character personalities.
I thought this approach would be better than me telling each actor exactly how I wanted
them to speak.”
This method of animation also allowed the animators to accurately recreate the mouth
shapes of the five main Japanese vowel sounds, which can have either a normal or extended
length (BFI 60).
Another way of ensuring perfect lip-sync was with the use of a device called a Quick Action
Recorder (BFI 59).
The recorder would use a video camera to quickly digitize frames and play them back at 24 frames
per second so that motion could be assessed and adjusted before the cels were colored
(BFI 59).
Normally, the animator would have to check the accuracy of the lip sync themselves, and
it still wouldn’t always come out right.
The recorder allowed them to make sure everything looked right before going to the expense of
developing the film (Akira: Making Of).
Mitsunori Murata: “We also were able to mimic the actors’ movements as they spoke,
making the animation quite realistic.
It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to achieve this kind of accuracy in recording
in sync.”
Next, we’ll take a look at the cinematography of Akira and the unique way its scenes are
lit.
The scale of Akira presented new challenges for the animation process.
To make it more manageable, the movie was broken down into four main sequences (Akira:
Making Of).
The movie uses a lot of live-action techniques, including slow-motion, point-of-view shots,
backlighting, lens flares, and shaky motion that mimics hand-held camerawork (BFI 60).
This gives it a very cinematic look that is still distinctly anime (BFI 60).
A particularly noticeable one of these techniques that helps give Akira such a unique look is
the use of light trails on the motorcycles, which in a live-action movie, would be made
using a long exposure (BFI 60).
Another challenge for animators was that there are a lot of night scenes, and Ôtomo specifically
wanted a dark, grimy look for the movie (BFI 62).
In order to get this look, they had to layer many cels on top of each other to reduce the
light levels––some sequences used up to nine layers (BFI 62).
Director of photography Katsuji Misawa said that most of the action taking place at night
[quote] “created several interesting problems and [they] had to use extreme care and the
right photographic equipment to get the desired effects” (Akira: Making Of).
He went on to say that the dim look Ôtomo wanted was very difficult to achieve with
a camera, and they had to overlap drawings over each other as well as over the background
(Akira: Making Of).
Even better, while most animated night scenes would be fairly monotone, Kimmie Yamana, the
color coordinator, used a total of 327 different colors (BFI 62).
Art director Toshiharu Mizutani noted that night scenes are usually drawn with blue tones
to create a darker look, but he had always wanted to try an unorthodox color scheme (Akira:
Making Of).
Ôtomo approved, so he instead stressed reds and greens.
Mizutani said that being allowed to experiment was one of the reasons he was [quote] “so
very happy to be involved in such a progressive project with an innovative artist like Ôtomo
at the helm” (Akira: Making Of).
The city of Neo Tokyo is incredibly complex.
It took Ôtomo several issues of the comics to fully flesh it out, so adapting it on screen
was a challenge of its own, along with achieving the specific, gritty style Ôtomo wanted.
Katsuhiro Ôtomo: “As I originally developed the comic, I used each issue to build more
depth and size to this mammoth city.
I kept trying to achieve this by creating a variety of situations to stage the graphic
storytelling, but with film, you get to combine all this into one and I think it is much more
convincing on film than in a serialized comic strip.”
When Mizutani asked Ôtomo for an example of the movie’s “world view,” Ôtomo
drew him a detailed, grungy city street (Empire).
Mizutani looked at it and declared that level of detail was impossible (Empire).
Luckily, it turned out not to be impossible and the level of detail in the movie is insane.
For the thousands of high-rise buildings in the night scenes, they had to precisely measure
each hand-painted dot of light representing the windows in order to get the perspective
perfect (BFI 63).
Toshiharu Mizutani: “We begin with three-millimeter windows.
The one behind would have windows only a half-millimeter and the one behind that could be represented
only by a dot, perhaps a line.
It requires very precise drawing.”
Ôtomo drew on live-action cinematic styles in all areas of the movie, including the editing
(Empire).
Perhaps because of his background as a manga artist, Ôtomo did use some unique angles,
occasionally breaking the 180-degree rule, and used a pretty fast-paced editing style,
which you can see in the scenes where Tetsuo hallucinates after escaping the hospital (BFI
62).
When Ôtomo first saw the rushes of the movie he was disappointed, especially in the second
half (Forbes).
In an interview, he said, “I left the theater very quickly and came back home to tell my
wife that the movie was a failure.
This was because I thought the first half was good but because the time and budget was
limited, with so many cuts, the quality dropped as the story developed.
In general, I thought the picture quality and cut quality went down when the movie went
into the latter half (Forbes).”
It seems that editing was a particular concern for Ôtomo, because he continued, saying,
“To give some examples of what I mean, there were just too many cuts.
I think there were more than two thousand cuts in the end.
That meant we didn’t have enough animators to do all the work.
So each animator had way more work than they could do, so that meant they did a lot of
overtime and had to make compromises in terms of animation quality (Forbes).”
Luckily though, when Akira was remade with five-channel audio, Ôtomo saw the movie again
and liked it better (Forbes).
The character design in Akira is distinctive.
Ôtomo once stated that he was influenced by American comics while writing the manga,
saying that he wanted to create an “American comic-style world” (Empire).
And it’s true that Akira looks different from most anime, but that isn’t to say that
it looks American either––it’s a style unique to itself.
Most anime and manga conform to a style popularized by renowned manga artist Osamu Tezuka in the
1950s and 60s (BFI 63).
Tezuka’s style was itself influenced by Disney cartoons, and like most anime to follow,
features very wide-eyed and exaggerated figures (BFI 63).
Another typical feature of this anime and manga style is that the main characters will
usually have different hairstyles or colors to help the audience distinguish them (BFI
63).
However, most of these conventions are not found in Akira.
Overall, the characters in Akira are correctly proportioned, realistic, and have a distinctly
Japanese appearance (BFI 63).
That said, Ôtomo will break away from realism when it serves a purpose.
An obvious example is Tetsuo’s mutation, but more subtle examples are how the characters’
expressions will sometimes become more cartoonish for effect (BFI 65).
Sometimes cartoonish movement is used to add comic relief, like how Kaneda's movement becomes
exaggerated when he doges falling rubble, injecting humor into a horrific scene (BFI
65).
Another notable difference from most anime is that Akira’s female characters are drawn
in the same style as the male characters (BFI 65).
While anime, in general, is somewhat notorious for its extremely cute female characters,
the female characters in Akira are realistically drawn and more practically dressed (BFI 65).
Katsuhiro Ôtomo: “I’m often asked why I always draw such strange-looking girls.
Well, it’s hard to say because there is no real reason.
It’s just that most comics emphasize super cute girls.
Actually, it’s easy to draw good-looking girls.
Anyone can do that.”
The incredible level of detail and commitment to an artistic vision in Akira truly sets
it apart.
Ôtomo, as both a manga artist and a longtime cinephile, saw the possibility in adapting
Akira to attempt what had never been done before and create something truly unique.
Check out this episode’s bonus video on the incredible music of Akira.
It’s available right now on Patreon for one dollar and it will go into the five-dollar
archive when my next video goes up.
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If you like this one, you’ll be happy to know that my next video is also on Akira.
You can find it right here when it’s ready.
Thanks for watching!