Akira

Animation: A

Story: A-

Overall impression: A

Akira is the legendary anime. If you have ever seen anime, chances are you saw Akira, it plays occasionally on the Sci-Fi channel. Akira is based on the original manga work by Katsuhiro Otomo. Good luch collecting the entire 2000+ pg story. The trade paperbacks are almost impossible to find and the original issues are around 7 dollars each. With 38 issues thats 266 dollars devoted to one story. Plus, they still have not finished printing all the issues into trade paperback. 31 through 38 are still comic only.

The movie itself is amazing. The story has about 4 seprate plot lines and they all tie together at the end. The animation is jaw dropping and while the ending is along the lines of 2001 in terms of confusion factor, the overall movie is amazing. Akira was recently rereleased on tape along with the rest of the steamline pictures video line. I guess they finally got out of bankrupcy. The best way to watch the movie is on laserdisk (or DVD if it is ever released) however finding the laser version is very hard. I am still looking.