I am pretty sure the title I picked is going to require a lot of justification but let’s go with it for now. I recently watched a movie titled ‘AKIRA’ and I fell in love with the art, visuals and the theme of it… It is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film which is today considered as one of the greatest animated films in the action and science fiction genres of all times.

While the movie has an 8/10 IMDb rating, in my mind there is no doubt why this movie deserves more, why it is still relevant and why it has acclaimed such a name! The manga on which the movie is based on is also worth mentioning and the lovers of this franchise often likes to collect the 6 volume set which is equally breathtaking!

I won’t talk about the plot of the movie in much detail but I would quote the description given in the Crunchyroll website –

Clandestine army activities threaten the war torn city of Neo-Tokyo when a mysterious being with powerful psychic abilities escapes his prison and inadvertently draws a violent motorcycle gang into a heinous web of experimentation. As a result, a biker with a twisted mind embarks on a path of war, seeking revenge against a society what once called him weak.

Not only it is well made, but it goes way deeper making you think about the way one judge things and perceive others in the society. It sheds its take on corruption, politics, army, use of power and technology and moreover the effects on children on a post-apocalyptic war torn society.

Now coming to the science part of the movie – and here I would say a bunch of terminologies have been used like ‘Photon Collapse’ , ‘Quantum Mechanics’, ‘Birth of the Universe’, etc. in a metaphorical fashion. This instigated my mind at first and I tried to see at what level of accuracy is the film has used this terminologies. Actually, I found that there is a subreddit for sharing and discussing all things related to AKIRA and a lot of people have different takes on the meaning and message conveyed throughout the movie. I would say that the creators have reached out to science and have drawn some words out of it to make the plot of the movie feel much more engaging and mystical – not in a literal sense but as a metaphor to indicate the fragility of human control over forces as great as nuclear weapons, supernatural powers, or universal creation.

All in all, the movie was a great fun to watch and I believe it still holds its relevance in today’s day and age.