Super Late Night Post

After spending nearly all my Black Friday writing a environmental geology paper on my water supply, I feel the need to post at 3am (I realize the post will say 4am but I am in central time). So Texas lost to A&M and Colt McCoy left the game with 20 seconds left with a pinched nerve. This is after he was hit with an extremely cheap shot by an Aggie player after a play had ended. With this loss UT will be lucky to get the Big 12 title. After finishing my paper I enjoyed watching a movie that I consider to be a classic, a must-see. The movie is Akira. You may be saying, "The concept of a cartoon movie being a classic is not just stupid but its idiotic." And the fact is that anime is strongly looked down upon by Americans these days. Most people think anime is for super nerdy computer geeks who don't have any girlfriends. Well to be honest some of it is...but there are certain anime movies that just downright good movies. Akira is one of these movies, Princess Mononake is another superb movie with it actually being released by a divison of Disney and having some serious star quality with Billy Bob Thorton and Jada Pinkett Smith lending their voices.

But back to Akira. It was released way back in 1988 and it boasts the most jaw-dropping animation quality of any movie I've ever seen. Every frame of action was hand drawn, as opposed to what most animes did in the late 80's and early 90's which was to have static characters with the backgrounds moving. The movie is an adaptation of the 2000+ page magna of the same name by Katsuhiro Otomo. The story is set in post-WWW III Tokyo. The plot has numerous themes and a lot of symbolism. While some of it works, the ideas of evolution and tampering with powers beyond our comprehension (Katsuhiro is specifically talking about the atomic bomb here), some of it is dated, the ideas of teen angst and rebellion. As with any adaptation there are going to be some casualties in terms of cuts from the source material, especially when the source material is over 2000 pages long and it is being condensed into a short two hours. I myself have never read the magna but it is evident that some material is missing has the last twenty minutes of the film break down story wise, though it provides some of the most spectacular animation of the movie. If you are in to anime and haven't seen Akira then go out and see it now because it has been the foundation for all anime after it. If you aren't in to anime I still recommend giving it a try, you may be surprised at how much you like it. On a final note, the movie is very graphic so don't watch it with little kids and the actors they got to do voice overs are well picked but the story doesn't translate as well...so watch it in Japanese with subtitles. Bed time.

~Aldana