Film of the week - hmm... let me think…. A few months back I asked a young rapscallion of my aquaintance if he had ever seen Akira, and to my shock and dismay the answer was no. I was shocked and dismayed. Akira was the film that legitimised animation in the West. Before Akira 99.9% of all animated films and TV series available in Britain and North America were aimed solely at children, often with the cynical aim of trying to get them to part with cash for merchandise. Sure, there were family films like Disney, but these were few and far between, and the less said the better about the titles aimed at adults, which tended to be one-trick ponies aimed to shock people with the fact that there were fart jokes, drug-taking and 'cuss' words in a medium usually associated with children. The release of Akira changed all that and opened the public's eyes to the fact that a good quality animated film could show things that, thanks to the restraints of budgets, most Hollywood films couldn’t even dream of, and that there was a market for sensible animated films in the west that weren’t aimed at families or kids. As well as opening up the west to anime it had a huge effect on American animation too; it’s a fact that without Akira showing the market was there, there would have been no Futurama, South Park, Family Guy and countless others. Anyway, essay over; suffice to say if you’ve never seen Akira you’re missing out. Sure, it's not the best anime movie ever made but it’s damn good and as an example of the cyber punk genre (which it really helped define) you can’t get much better.
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