akira made me japanese
by chu sei on jul 3, 2003, 13:03
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| chusei and friends hang out |
"no akira, no matrix, it's that important" EMPIRE
"extraordinary... sheer brilliance" DAILY TELEGRAPH
"action and innovation that would leave most hollywood directors a-gasp with
awe and envy" SFX
i wish i could come up with some kind of exciting quote about akira. something worthy of going on the dvd cover. i wish i had some kind of snazzy starting line that would really grab your attention. truth is, i don't, akira does what it says on the tin.
it really is as good as the quotes suggest. it really is a damn fine piece of cinema. i'm quite sure you could look it up in any big type film guide and they will tell you the same thing. they will tell you akira had a profound influence on the world of animation and has influenced so many directors and artists. it is heralded as a classic by people who have never even seen it before.
read any article on akira and i won't hesitate to tell you about the symbolism in the film, the genius of katsuhiro otomo and many other film critic type nonsense. however, this is me - you won't be getting any of that crap from me. i do love akira, and i can see the points all these people have, but i've heard it all before. so instead, i'm going to tell you about my experience of akira, and what it has done for me.
i first came across akira when i was about fifteen i think. it was around the time that me and my mates all started watching 18-rated films and feeling special because someone had a copy of the running man. back then, to me, japan was this place full of mad looking samurai, and everyone just like in china, did martial arts. i knew japan had nuclear weapons dropped on two of its major cities during ww2 and that they wrote in strange symbols, lived in fear of ninjas, ate rice, drank sake, wore kimonos everywhere, watched sumo and made lots of electronics. i also knew they would often visit other countries and take photos of everything. as you can see, i knew quite a bit about japan, but was pretty much living in 15-year-old uneducated ignorant bliss. then one day along came akira.
and akira changed my fucking world. if i look back now, akira is the thing that kickstarted my fascination with the land of the rising sun. it was the first real contact i had with japanese culture, and the first thing to really grab my attention from another culture. akira was shown on tv at somepoint around then. a had been told about it by a friend or someone to tape it, so I taped it. the next day i watched it, well, technically over the next two days i watched it. back in those days i wasn't used to films being about two hours long. i used to watch the police academy films a lot, which were only about one hour and 15 minutes long, so two hours was a lifetime to me (incidently i still watch, and love, the police academy films. they are masterpieces of comedy).
akira had everything a growing, acne-ridden, pony-tailed, star wars obsessed freak could possibly want. the characters had cool sounding names like tetsuo and kaneda. there were laser guns, really cool motorbikes, gangs, freaky psychic children, explosions, blood, action and violence. this was some proper next level shit i was seeing here. i didn't understand it, i was quite thick back then (blame steve guttenberg), but dammit i loved it. it was without a doubt the coolest most incomprehensible thing i had ever seen, i couldn't figure out why the film was called akira, when the main characters were tetsuo and kaneda, and why the character of akira only appeared in it for so little time.
after seeing akira, a whole new world had been opened up to me. up until then i had no idea about japanese-made cartoons especially the japanese made cartoons with tits in them. back then tits in a film, especially nipples, were a big deal and could make or break a film in a young boy's eyes. i knew akira was an important film to me. i knew it was important because the film was cool with or without the presence of animated nipples - this was big, i didn't care about the nipples, what was it about this film? to this day i have never figured out what it is about akira that fascinates me so much. like i said earlier, it had so much in it. from then on japan was the coolest place on the face of the planet, and akira the coolest film ever.
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| vroom... |
japan, was a different place to me now. fuck disney, give me anime. i studied that film over and over again just to try and figure out how to draw like that. i spent that entire summer drawing futuristic motorbikes and cool looking kids with laser guns. i could already draw, but i wanted to be that good, i am still nowhere near being that good, but i'm trying. everytime i see akira i have to try that little bit harder to better myself.
there was a world outside the world of comics, that wasn't run by disney where 'childish cartoon drawings' were appreciated by adults and not on a geeky level. there was credibility to be had here. i was going to show those teachers i could do something with the styles they thought to be so silly but really meant much more.
the first thing to practice was drawing people getting shot. i loved the scene where the guy gets shot near the beginning, i loved the way they had animated the blood. to this day i still love drawing blood, and people getting shot and, even better, my girlfriend loves the way i draw people being shot.
then there was the cool hair these characters had. it took me a few more years to bother cutting off my ponytail, but the first thing i wanted was hair like tetsuo. akira had opened my eyes to really bizarre, funky looking haircuts. i've since tried several times to have hair like him. and there is another thing akira gave me - jealousy of the japanese for having hair like that. here i am stuck with my damn gaijin hair. i can however have an haircut like kaneda. quite often i'll flatten my hair down, looking like a bit of an indy kid but when i look in the mirror, secretly i'm pretending i'm kaneda. i want kaneda's jacket as well. for a while after seeing akira i wanted to be kaneda. it seemed so much more fun than being fucking michael jordan or arnie.
arnie films didn't have the cool soundtrack that akira did, that strange fusion of contemporary and classical japanese music. i started looking around for japanese music and found the kodo drummers. i went to see them play live, it was possibly the best live act i have ever seen, it even beats the shaolin monks. i still have the tape i bought at the show, and i still listen to it. before then all i knew of was pop music and ice cube.
shortly afterwards, my dad started working with this japanese dude. this japanese dude, was a really cool guy and would often come over to our house and his name? akira. so, you can imagine my reaction when i heard this. so akira turned up at our house quite often, always wearing baggy pants so baggy pants were cool. i remember saying to mum: "mum, i want to wear baggy pants." from shortly after then i started wearing baggy pants and i've never turned back. baggy pants led me into many things also...
akira has had a profound impact on my life. recently i have had the chance to watch the digitally remastered dvd of akira, and it is as beautiful as ever. however, nothing will ever beat that slightly grainy original version that comes in the boxed set. the new version is fantastic, crisp and sounds great but it is the original, crapper quality version that had the effect on me, and will always stand out as one of the defining moments of my life.
"no akira, no chusei, it's that important" - brian sewell
"i still don't really get it" - chusei's brother.
akira is back out now on deluxe dvd through palm pictures.
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