[ot] Akira
- Thread starter gamecat
- Start date
what exactly is teh question?
Akira was a gifted child which the military tried to use as their ultimate weapon. The drugs and such were ways of controling him, but became unstable and killed him. He was placed in the jars and frozzen.
Years later, they found tetsuo, a kid that had teh same basic brain wave patterns as Akira,a nd so they tried again. this time, he did not fifnish the treatment and went on a rampage. They theorized that if he had finished, he woul be unstoppable- but his powers (like Anikin's) made him arrogance, which led to his downfall.
The three wrinkly gnome like things were people that underwent the treatment. they finished, but since their gift was not as great as tetsuo's, they were no match for him.
Tetsuo's everygtrowing power could not be controled by him or the drugs (as the brainwaves showed when it became rapid and unpredictable, and then ceased) which made him explode into a blob. Th ethree gnomes then called upon the spirit of Akira to save them and he destroyed tetsuo.
That s my take on the story. great movie- I love the story and animation. No other anime has come close to the level of Akira- my fav is the bike scene with the tail lights leaving a streak as they sped by...
Akira was a gifted child which the military tried to use as their ultimate weapon. The drugs and such were ways of controling him, but became unstable and killed him. He was placed in the jars and frozzen.
Years later, they found tetsuo, a kid that had teh same basic brain wave patterns as Akira,a nd so they tried again. this time, he did not fifnish the treatment and went on a rampage. They theorized that if he had finished, he woul be unstoppable- but his powers (like Anikin's) made him arrogance, which led to his downfall.
The three wrinkly gnome like things were people that underwent the treatment. they finished, but since their gift was not as great as tetsuo's, they were no match for him.
Tetsuo's everygtrowing power could not be controled by him or the drugs (as the brainwaves showed when it became rapid and unpredictable, and then ceased) which made him explode into a blob. Th ethree gnomes then called upon the spirit of Akira to save them and he destroyed tetsuo.
That s my take on the story. great movie- I love the story and animation. No other anime has come close to the level of Akira- my fav is the bike scene with the tail lights leaving a streak as they sped by...
Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
The Akira movie is like the first few issues of the comic. Probably the only magna series I've liked, the artist was great.
Roland Delacroix
First Post
My belief is that he the experiment caused him to evolve into some new intelligence, perhaps what we would call a god. I'll watch it again tonite, purely for research 
The dvd set is awesome BTW.
The dvd set is awesome BTW.
S
shurai
Guest
Akira
Ahh, Akira! What a classic. The ending, to me, always meant something relatively specific:
The gnomes are just children who've been under experimentation for a long time. They look old because of side effects of the treatment. Tetsuo himself had latent psychic power that one of the gnomes awakened within him. It turns out to be very powerful, as powerful as Akira's once was. Akira didn't die, he transcended. He shed his humanity, like a butterfly emerging from a coccoon, and became something greater. The unfortunate thing is, his power was so extreme that he caused great destruction in his rebirth. Tetsuo was suffering the same fate, but Akira returns and helps him also transcend.
That's one thing I loved about Akira: It mixes hard, gritty sci-fi with an interesting commentary on the power of the mind and the nature of human potential. It poses interesting questions on what it means to be human, and what humanity will be like in the future. As Ghost in the Shell suggests, to remain the same in a dynamic environment is futile. It really makes you wonder: What is the future going to be like? How will humanity change as its environment changes? How will it remain the same? Can we really guess? How far can we wander from what we are now before one might say that we're no longer human beings? Will it matter? Is the rhetorical question overused in modern oratory?
Dammit now I have to go watch Akira and Ghost in the Shell again. Speaking of which, if you liked Akira you might like GotS too. : ]
-Shurai
Ahh, Akira! What a classic. The ending, to me, always meant something relatively specific:
The gnomes are just children who've been under experimentation for a long time. They look old because of side effects of the treatment. Tetsuo himself had latent psychic power that one of the gnomes awakened within him. It turns out to be very powerful, as powerful as Akira's once was. Akira didn't die, he transcended. He shed his humanity, like a butterfly emerging from a coccoon, and became something greater. The unfortunate thing is, his power was so extreme that he caused great destruction in his rebirth. Tetsuo was suffering the same fate, but Akira returns and helps him also transcend.
That's one thing I loved about Akira: It mixes hard, gritty sci-fi with an interesting commentary on the power of the mind and the nature of human potential. It poses interesting questions on what it means to be human, and what humanity will be like in the future. As Ghost in the Shell suggests, to remain the same in a dynamic environment is futile. It really makes you wonder: What is the future going to be like? How will humanity change as its environment changes? How will it remain the same? Can we really guess? How far can we wander from what we are now before one might say that we're no longer human beings? Will it matter? Is the rhetorical question overused in modern oratory?
Dammit now I have to go watch Akira and Ghost in the Shell again. Speaking of which, if you liked Akira you might like GotS too. : ]
-Shurai
GitS was a lil odd- they tried to fit a long series of comics intoa 2 hr movie- and it lefta lot out. It was all resolved in the end, but a lot of points were strange and dijointed in the middle.
and yes- I will habve to watch akira again...
thanks shurai for pointing out that akira transcended. i always thought that Tetsuo could not have cause he was so arrogant and so was killed...
and yes- I will habve to watch akira again...
thanks shurai for pointing out that akira transcended. i always thought that Tetsuo could not have cause he was so arrogant and so was killed...
At the end of Akira (unless they changed something in the recent re-release), there is a picture of an atom? (galaxy maybe, it's been a while) saying "I am Tetsuo". One interpretation of that being that each psychic who achieves the level of Akira, essentially goes on to create their own universe. Perhaps each psychic is the source of a "Big Bang". The ending was always ambigious to some extent and isn't any clearer in the manga.
Aaron L
Hero
Tetsuo shed his humanity, transcendant, as has been said. He went as far beyond humanity as we are beyond ameoba, but he couldn't control his power, and he stopped taking the drugs the government gave him that suppressed that power. The 3 other test subjects called on Akira, who had undergone the same problem, and he came back to take Tesua with him. I always assumed that Akira took Tetsuo to teach him, but I have never read the manga. I probably should.
I thought it was said explicitly said that he had transcended from matter into pure energy, but my memory could be failing me. Matter and energy are closely related and indeed matter can be converted to energy. So, what happens if a person becomes an entity of pure energy? That's how I understood the ending. It's a meeting of the transcendent spiritualism of the East ala Taoism and Buddhism, with the scientific revelations of the West regarding the nature of existence. That mirrors one of the fundamental driving forces behind what anime is, itself, really. East meets West. It is a reconciliation of spirit and science.
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