Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira occupies an interesting place world popular culture. To an almost spiritualized, cultist, and transcendental present places in the pop culture landscape for the cult horde of anime fans.
As a social nostalgic and was born a symbolic vision as iconography ahead if its time for a variety of reasons.
A breakout of the anime scene during 1988, Susan Napier considers it a:
“Masterpiece of technical animation” (Napier, 2001).
Furthermore, she considers it in many considerations and avenues of conceptualism:
”Akia is also a complex and challenging work of art, that provoked, bewildered, and occasionally inspired western audiences when it first appeared outside Japan in 1990” (Napier, 2001).
The contextual of aberrant yet portrayal of a dystopian future (Neo Tokyo) abstract seemed almost, in a non-dissimilar verve prophetic, an inordinately different portrayal of a Japan-centric vision of Orwell’s 1984.
Or, to consider further stylistically onto the verve of cyberpunk of William Gibsons’ Neuromancer (1984) a work of fiction of Cyberpunk.
However, there is much metaphorical context continuing behind the scenes, the obsessions of technologies and a social commentary on Japan’s role in the second world war, argues Angie Koo:
“The movie ultimately reflects what could be interpreted as Ōtomo’s criticism towards the continuation of science and technology that is known to be hazardous and life life-threatening lessons that he believed should have been learned from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki disasters.” (Angie Koo, 2015)
To ask why Akira has such a high place in Popular culture?
A question one must further consider the veracities of the pertaining social backdrop.
The accession in its style and contextuality the West: before social media, before Amazon.com even before the internet was matured into an accessible form for mass consumption, Akira was created.
Akira Appealed to western audiences considering topics, ideas characters similar to the seminal.
Why so?
William Gardner considers the opening sequence of Otomo Ktshuhiro’s Neo Tokyo “The opening title sequence of Otom Katsuhiro’s film Akira is surely one of the most famous in all of anime. The first shot shows an aerial view of an elevated highway transecting a dense modern cityscape.” (GARDNER, 2020)
Akira appeared Yet inaccessible in animated form.
This is an animated release within the audiences of The West, before Disney’s A Little Mermaid (1989), Before The Lion King (1994) graced the West’s digital animated shores)
The cultural impact of Akira was according to sources, quintessentially, and considerably powerful on the pulse that was popular culture.
Akira is now widely regarded as one of the greatest animated movies of all time and prompted an increase in popularity of anime movies in the US and, generally, outside Japan.
It paved the way for the mass appeal (and mass consumption) of the soon to follow mass commercializing of Manga to Japanese Animated features and serials.
In digression furthermore, why is it considered pertinent to a key place in its anime culture?
For several reasons to consider:
- It was considered an enigmatic representation of antithesis to the current market- being anime during when animation was considered childish “something for children”.
- It in its original form considered something non\-mainstream “something for occasional abstract, art house-film” to becoming a precursory of a new popular art form and medium that would become a serious commercial reference, and into consideration “adult animation”.
Today from low culture, the cultural tradition of Anime, Mecha, and Manga have through a social metamorphosis of content and genre from occupying an insular minute market in Japan to become a serious topic of social relevant discussion, and high culture, a high art form, and a billion-dollar industry.
To which Otomo Katshurio’s Akira will always be held in high regard the canonical iconic revolutionary icon, the portrayed piece of anime and art in contextual halls of history.
Bibliography
Angie Koo, B. Y. (2015). An essay on Akira. Retrieved from http://www.swarthmore.edu/: http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/exhibitions/japan/essays/vision1.php#cited
GARDNER, W. O. (2020). The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction. University of Minnesota Press.
Napier, S. J. (2001). Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. Palgrave Macmillan.
Pop Genres 2020 