So my brother recently watched Akira(literally like 2 hours ago) and I think it lives up to the hype. However with that being said, I’m still confused about the plot of the movie. What was the ending ? And what exactly is Akira?
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
This movie is about the folly of experimenting with the next step in human evolution, and its dangerously disastrous yet amazingly transformative consequences on humanity.
Akira is a human child transformed into a destructive force beyond nature, the unfortunate result of tinkering with children’s nascent psychic abilities in the hopes of creating a terrifyingly powerful new weapon.
In the end, Tetsuo’s power grew beyond his body’s ability to control, and Akira’s friends (the psychic children) used their powers to contact Akira and bring him back to take themselves and Tetsuo away to the next level of energetic human consciousness and existence, beyond the physical biological form.
whoa
That was perfectly said
Akira was the friends we made along the way
Akira is the person responsible for Tokyo going full Hiroshima due to his powers going out of control, which ultimately lead to ww3 and Japan barley surviving the after math and his remains were collected for further study and put into cold storage
In layman terms as far as the anime?
Young biker gang accidentally runs into an escapee from a military experiment enhancing mutations in people to create psychic, telekinetic and other “powers” for military applications, while their biggest prior success Akira got so powerful he essentially nuked Neo-Tokyo with his power.
After a near collision with the escapee one of the bikers, Tetsuo, is taken by the military and found to have underlined psychic ability as well and is exposed to the same treatment in order to strengthen his abilities, until he escapes.
Meanwhile best bud and leader of the “Capsules” bike gang Kaneda looks to free Tetsuo from the military with the assistance of some local resistance fighters, the current government being pretty shit, and eventually reunites with his BFF Tetsuo only to find he’s become a bit of a prick since having his inherent powers increased while the lack of control over these powers risks a repeat of another nuke to Neo-Tokyo like Akira.
Conflict and a power struggle ensues between Tetsuo and Kaneda, best buds but with Tetsuo’s recent powers leading him to want to be the alpha after years of simping to Kaneda and the rest of the bike gang.
Tetsuo uses his powers too much and can’t control them leading to Kaneda having to kill him to save Neo-Tokyo from going nuclear, as happened with Akira.
Roll credits.
Kaneda doesn’t kill Tetsuo
No he doesn’t, hence my super basic description and call out its layman terms as that’s absolutely what most people think who just watch the anime alone else the OP might as well read the manga.
If you want to talk semantics and accuracy completely ignore my post, but that’s not the context here.
Layman’s terms means using simple words instead of industry jargon, not giving incorrect summaries
Cool, have a good one.
The government had been experimenting on children to waken and manipulate psychic powers. One of the kids, Akira, sort of psychically "blew up" in 1988, that's the first scene of the movie.
His body was recovered, dissected, and frozen by the government. Some of Akira's psychic classmates at the time (numbered 26, etc) have "grown up" since then to be those three weird blue kids.
I'll assume you followed most of the plot with Tetsuo and his growing powers and drug use. So, he goes to find Akira in the frozen vault under the stadium only to find Akira's specimen jars. And then he starts to lost control of his powers, "blowing up" in his own body horror way. The three blue kids go to Akira's jars and psychically "put Akira back together again" -- more or less. Akira then promptly "blows up" again just as he did at the start of the movie in 1988.
So Kaneda gets caught in the dual psychic blasts of Tetsuo and Akira. He first falls into Tetsuo's psyche and experiences those flashbacks of when Kaneda and Tetsuo were kids and we hear how Tetsuo was abandoned as a child. Kaneda flies out, through a building and flies into Akira's psyche and we flashback to Akira's memories of pre-1988 government psychic-powers camp along with his three blue friends back when they were normal children. Finally, Kaneda goes back to visit Tetsuo's psyche once more and he relives meeting Tetsuo for the first time before the psychics all say bye-bye and leave the city a mess.
The end.
Nicely put. Thanks
I’m gonna be that guy…
The movie is 2hrs long, the book is SIX VOLUMES; there’s a lot that you’re going to miss during translation. The jist is more like… Akira is God, he’s revived in the book and the government collapses and is replaced by a Warlord Collective lead by Tetsuo (who acts as a Prophet to Akira, who never speaks).
There are also Lady Miyako’s Temple, and The American Government (they show up with battleships after the Japanese Government collapses) that serve as opposition to Tetsuo and his crew.
This all happens in Vol. 4; so… yeah. I would suggest going through the manga, it’s 6 Volumes and each volume will only take roughly 45-60min to read depending on how long you want to look at the artwork.
I wrote a long series of comments which turned into an excellent discussion a few years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/s/yRpOWPucj7