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by Katsuhiro Otomo (1982-1995)
The first three volumes of Akira are more than impressive artistically, both at face-value and as "sequential art" or whatever comic-lit-crit hot-button term you prefer, but they also comprise the main source material for the animated feature film (1988), so if you seen the movie, or, if you're like me and have watched the movie repeatedly, with religious attention and devotion (this would be about 1993-1995), then the first three volumes are not going to do a lot for you. Rather, they read more like curio, as there's a constant meta-narrative at play in your head comparing the pages to their filmic counterparts, both in terms of accuracy as well as elements dropped from the film.
Its not until you transition into the final three volumes that Otomo gets his hooks in you. The film, it turns out, only really covers the first half of this really, truly fantastic story. Furthermore, the second half ramps up Akira's radical sci-fi cred. What starts as an excellent cyberpunkian conspiracy story about telekinetics (with a great melodramatic backdrop) shifts to a post-apocalyptic struggle of a demi-god's half-baked empire against black-ops spooks and telekinetic templars leading to a revolutionary twist ending (with a great melodramatic backdrop), complete with destruction writ large of Tokyo, an Olympic stadium, a U.S. carrier group, and the moon. I read the first three volumes piecemeal over the course of a week or so. I read the last three in one sitting in one night.
Furthermore, the Kaneda character, the clear protaganist in the film, takes on added depth in the manga. It seems absurd at times but Kaneda's drive to stop Tetsuo has little to do with saving the city or stopping Tetsuo's sociopathic Imperial aspirations, but has everything to do with a sort of teen-gang violation of a code of honor. Kaneda's use of a stolen special-ops laser rifle is one of the most memorable scenes from the film. What's more memorable in the manga is Kaneda making no bones of setting out to simply beat Tetsuo with his own two fists. The absurdity is of course that these attacks should be meaningless to Tetsuo by virtue of his telekinesis, yet there Kaneda stands before on the pages, surviving Tetsuo's wake of destruction again and again. Kaneda's continuous horn-dog pursuit of Kai throughout the pages of the epic further underscore the degree to which this entire story might actually just be about teenage boys gaining the upperhand in what was originally an adult spook conspiracy.
Little surprise the film is as good as it is, seeing as its ink-and-paper basis is an exemplar of the form.
-dd
I read all 8 volumes in a 3 day period a couple years ago. It's brilliant. I disagree, though about the first three volumes not adding much to fans of the film, it added depth and sorely needed (for me at least) context and spoonfed narrative. The logical leaps the film takes are smoothed into baby steps. Not to badmouth the film. It's amazing.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it adds depth, context, and narrative. I guess what I didn't put enough emphasis on was just how many times I watched Akira in that 3-4 year period. I can't even count. Probably 20-50 times, something like that. Watch a movie that many times, you pick up the little pieces that (barely) keep those logical leaps in check.
ReplyDeleteSo, having watched it that many times at such an impressionable age, when I'm reading that first half the film is just right there behind my eyelids the whole time, which creates this annoying meta-conversation in my head of book vs. film. The second half the manga, which has little to nothing to do with film, frees me from these obsessive teenage memories, making more enjoyable on its own merits.
Also, when I finished the last page, I think one of the first things I thought was "how awesome would it be to read this without EVER having seen the film?" (VERY AWESOME)
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