Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 10

  94/100

  An aggressive tour de force of influential animation, tangible world-building, inferiority complexes, biker gangs, giant teddy bears, and overwhelming sequences of violence. It stays burrowed in your psyche, ruining a certain, seemingly simple nerve and, in the blink of an eye, shifting perspective and rendering previous knowledge meaningless. Strangely enough, this is only the second time I've seen Akira, with the first being my "initiation" (age 11) via a dubbed VHS copy, but I can't imagine spending more than a year away from this film ever again. It's a horrifyingly grandiose tragedy piece, melding flesh and metal, revolutions and minuscule angst, mind and body, rubber and pavement into a Nuclear aftermath of neon and rubble. In spite of its countless influences (Metropolis, 2001, A Clockwork Orange to name a few), there's nothing quite like it.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 34

  "The future is not a straight line. It is filled with many crossroads. There must be a future that we can choose for ourselves."

  Akira is one of the most important Japanese animated films of all time, and not simply because of the technical landmark it achieved in hand-drawn animation. It is an attempt to speak about one of the most unspeakable tragedies in human history, and to deal with the nature of atomic power and with historical change as such. The narrative begins with an image of a massive explosion devastating the city of Tokyo, but while the location is different and a title card claims that this is the beginning of World War III, there's no mistaking the…

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  Review by Jay ★★★½ 10

  *to the tune of hips dont lie* akira akira

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  Review by 👽 Zara 👽 ★★★★ 2

  kaneda and tetsuo should have just fucked it would have gotten rid of a lot of the tension between them

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★★ 1

  Probably the most galvanic and visceral example of a nation's collective psychic fallout since Honda's GODZILLA. Simultaneously dreading and anticipating a return to power.

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  Review by karen h. ★★★★★ 3

  that finale is still one of the most terrifying things i've ever seen in my life

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  Review by oleff ★★★★½ 10

  what the hell

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  Review by Willow Maclay

  Accidentally got way way too stoned before turning this on and didn't have the mental faculties to read the subtitles so I spent the entire movie just looking at this thing. Have you ever just LOOKED at Akira????? Holy shit

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  Review by san ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  That moment when your ego boost doesn’t help you in Neo-Tokyo so you have to play God elsewhere by creating your own universe.

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  Review by Branson Reese 1

  This movie cost one billion yen. If you gave me one billion yen I would be dead in two days.

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 17

  Neo-Tokyo. A giant-ass explosion. A crotch-rocket battle with the Insane Clown Posse. Suicide by cop. Ryu without Ken. Weird looking kids with cool powers. Student riots. Fuck is fuck in any language. Super-powers that make Carrie look like a Telekinesis Smurf. Oh Kaneda. Anime boobs. A barkeep's last pour. A determined general. Blowing a lot of shit up. Showdown at the Olympic Stadium with your best friend. A huge fuckin teddy bear. Attack of the giant arm. Becoming something you sure as fuck never dreamed of. A wild-ass visual adventure that is a must see for anyone who is Anime-curious.

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  Review by Chadwin ★★★ 1

  I really just didn’t know what was going on 90% of the time.