Movie · 1988 · Animation, Science Fiction, Action · 2h 4m · R · Japanese
Curator score: 8.9/10 (989.6K ratings)
Neo-Tokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E.
Overview
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.9/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.28/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Metacritic: 68
TMDB: 7.9/10
Director
Katsuhiro Otomo
Production
MBS, Sumitomo Corporation, TOHO, Kodansha, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, Bandai
A landmark cyberpunk anime that pairs jaw-dropping hand-drawn spectacle with apocalyptic scale, body horror, and political dread. It can be narratively opaque on first viewing, but the visual force, atmosphere, and cultural impact make it essential.
Best for
viewers who want a major sci-fi milestone
fans of cyberpunk, dystopias, and urban collapse
people drawn to intense animation and practical craft at a huge scale
audiences who don’t mind ambiguity and sensory overload
Skip if
you need a clean, easy-to-follow plot
you prefer restrained pacing or low-key character drama
graphic violence and body horror are a dealbreaker
you dislike films that prioritize mood and imagery over exposition
Overview
Akira is one of those rare films that feels like a warning and a prophecy at the same time. Neo-Tokyo is rendered with such density and momentum that the city itself becomes the main character, a living machine already halfway to collapse. The animation still feels astonishing because it is not just polished, but physically alive: speed, impact, and destruction all have weight.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is how it fuses spectacle with anxiety. Beneath the biker-gang swagger and psychic chaos is a story about power, humiliation, state violence, and the fear of what happens when a society can no longer contain its own experiments. The film can be disorienting, even deliberately so, but that instability is part of its force.
Bottom line
It is less a movie you “follow” than one you survive and remember. Even when the emotional throughline is fragmented, the images are not. Few animated films have matched its scale, its menace, or its sense that the future is already breaking apart in front of us.
Top Letterboxd reviews
adambolt (4★) · 7672 likes
well how are they going to have the olympics now
ScreeningNotes (5★) · 6389 likes
"The future is not a straight line. It is filled with many crossroads. There must be a future that we can choose for ourselves."
Akira is one of the most important Japanese animated films of all time, and not simply because of the technical landmark it achieved in hand-drawn animation. It is an attempt to speak about one of the most unspeakable tragedies in human history, and to deal with the nature of atomic power and with historical change as… more
Willow Maclay · 5407 likes
Accidentally got way way too stoned before turning this on and didn't have the mental faculties to read the subtitles so I spent the entire movie just looking at this thing. Have you ever just LOOKED at Akira????? Holy shit
karen h. (5★) · 3640 likes
that finale is still one of the most terrifying things i've ever seen in my life
Chadwin · 3392 likes
I really just didn’t know what was going on 90% of the time.
1995 · Action, Animation, Science Fiction · 1h 23m · NR · Curator 8.7/10 (568.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A foundational Japanese cyberpunk film with philosophical sci-fi, immaculate world-building, and a similarly influential visual legacy.