Japanese Anime

The story's beginnings include an introduction to the leader of one of the motorcycle gangs, Kaneda, who is mentoring his young friend Tetsuo . Kaneda is teaching Tetsuo the finer points of piloting their slick, racy motorcycles on the long freeway ramps leading into the city when Tetsuo, avoiding a child in the road, does an endo, crashes hard and is thrown off his cycle.

With this intro, one expects to see a typical retro society with road warrior type battles, big enclaves and protection rackets, the whole works. But no so. The story takes us through twists and turns and then, remarkably, leaps right into a rather interesting but quite unexpected sci-fi theme. Let's see if we can summarize the rest of the story without totally ruining it:

The child Tetsuo almost runs over is very strange looking, an extremely pale and premature aging boy who appears for a moment to float off the surface of the freeway. Suddenly the Military drops in and takes the kid and the injured Tetsuo away.

Tetsuo begins developing headaches and soon he is being experimented upon by the military.

Tetsuo, having cold sweats and strange dreams challenges his keepers so he can visit the room of the strange pale child. The story accelerates quickly as Tetsuo finds he is able to send a shock wave using his mind and blooding up some soldiers who won't let him proceed to the child's room. Once arriving at the rooom, Tetsuo learns that the pale child is one of number of test subjects of the council and the military.

All the children test subjects have strange powers, and Tetsuo is warned not to misuse his own power. Tetsuo, the classic angry young rebel, doesn't any pay attention however, and the story pushes on, taking us into Tetsuo's world as it finally intersects that of Akira. In short order the military is pitted against the growing power that is Tetsuo, and as Tetsuo begins to lose control, all hell breaks loose both in and around Tetsuo.

The story, which seems to go on and on before we finally find out who or what Akira is, never-the-less, well endowed with character development, excellent drawings and backgrounds, and encompasses the "fierce" face expressions genre of Japanese illustration. Also interesting is the way the illustrators shape the bodies, faces, and heads of the characters. For instance Kaneda is a good looking young man who is falling in love with an equally cute Kay a young rebel, yet Tetsuo starts out looking just a bit odd. His head begins to change as time goes on, at one stage almost triangular with the chin being the point at his neck and the top of his head being the base. This implys something extra ordinary going on in that skull, and we see rather quickly it is that new power.

The introduction of Akira, and the explanations for the neo-Tokyo disaster twist the plot from a probable WWIII scenario to something a bit more dark, and yet enhances the overall tone of the story .

Note also that the Akira video was based upon a series of comic books, which in turn were followed by several rather long but well illustrated comic book summary volumes all worth reading as they fill in a number of gaps in the Akira video. Also note that the entire Akira collection is worth big bucks in Japan and its price in the U.S. is nothing to sneeze at either.

In the U.S., the first comic #1 was published in Japan by "Kodansha Limited" in 1984, and imported to the U.S. by "Epic Comics, Inc." in 1988. The author of this remarkable series is Katsuhiro Otomo, and this awesome talent is also responsibel for penning the illustrations in the comic book series as well. The animation on the full length video was done with Otomo as the creative consultant and is believed to be quite true to the comics. Volume 5 of the comic compilation cost about $49.95, and the #1 comic was valued at around $22.00, both prices in mid 1995.

The subtitled laser disc version of Akira (imported direct from Japan) costs round $100.00.

It seems a metorite has clipped the ship, and repairs need to be made. Then people start turning up missing. Then the cat goes missing. And we find that there is also a robotic cat on board, the Lily CAT, which has been sent along on the journey to actually run the ship when (not if mind you, but "when") the human crew is unable.

Then enter the alien. This particular oozing slime type of monstersnarfs up people, integrating them into itself, very much like the mutating creature in the movie Leviathan (which show was patterned after the other?). Anyway the Lily CAT thinks the humans are screwing up by the numbers so is determined to carry on the mission, and of course is continually trying to kill off the creature by jetisonning large chunks the ship, emodied by "colony" modules.

An interesting sub-plot in this story is one of the main characters is found to be an escaping murder, the victims being the drug thugs who messed up his sister and who were responsible for her death. He and the owner of the cat (who says she didn't know the cat was mechanical and just so happens to be the daughter of the corporate owner of the ship) wind up falling in love.

This story is fairly well done, with, again, pretty vivid character development taking place rather quickly, including the addition of the fugitive murderer sub plot complete with a cop who has signed on at the last minute to follow the young man. The parallels to Alien are quite clear, but the addition of the Lily CAT and the young man's sub plot give it a new twist.

The Lily CAT is not developed well enough for the tale, and I don't believe the video should be given that title. Of course with more development of the mechanical cat (didn't the Six Million Dollar Woman have a friendly bionic dog?)

Ranma's life is complicated even more, when, after returning to Japan, he finds out that Ranma's father and a close friend of his has arranged a marriage with one of his friend's daughters, Akane. Neither Ranma nor Akane approve of this, and constantly avoid attempt to avoid having anything to do with each other.

Also there to atagonize Ranma is a large cast of characters. There is Kuno, a Shakespear spouting Kendo artist who is torn apart for his love of both Akane and Ranma's girl form,who naturally does not share his affection. There is Ryouga, who blames Ranma for knocking him into one of the springs that Ranma fell in, turning him into a miniature pig.

It all goes back to his Sensei who has said he will be a real hero, but the boy doesn't believe, and rejects the whole idea. He meets a young girl whose father is in the government and asks for his help in rescuing her dad...it seems the villian has him tied up, literally, subject to the magical powers being used to create the violence and choas in the city.

The story moves along rather slowly at first, the girl attempting to convince the boy first by calling into doubt his courage, which he shrugs off Then the girl trys batting her eyes at him and appealing to his protective instincts, which almost works. But at the last moment he shrugs that attempt off as well. She finally hooks him when she gets into real danger when some street punks corner her and are seconds away from tearing her clothes off and having a party. Only then does he begrudgingly rescue her and relunctantly agrees to go with her to meet and confront the villian.

An interesting quality to this Anime classic, is the depiction of their city with only the law of the streets. Cars overturned, there is always something on fire, street gangs, and even mystical beasts like giant human faced spiders, and the like. We even meet a young man with a voice and stature just like Tattoo in Fantasy Island and who also has befriended a two headed dog (which looks like it is of doberman pincher stock). The young man rides around on a jet powered skateboard in the sewers and subways of the city, and for a brief period allies himself with the pair.

This dark production pits a young but quite capable hunter against a race of vampires led by a master villian vampire who is intent on conquering the world. The young hunter himself is a vampire, who uses special drugs to abate his necessity to drink blood. The implication is that as a hunter he was unfortunate enough to fall prey to the vampires, but still carries on his mission despite his "disability". Of course, being among the undead has it's uses and the young hunter is able to take mortal wounds with barely a pause. A sidepoint to this anime hit is the relationship of the hunter to a young girl/woman who he is bound to protect. He appears to be falling in love with her, but cannot approach her because of his new nature.

While the quality of the production is top notch when it comes to the animation itself, the dialog is stilted (at least in the English version, I couldn't say whether the Japanese version is better or not), and the plot carries along very slowly in places, and in fact having seen this one several times I can't tell you the middle and the end. That must mean something.

Coming Soon: A description of the classic, "Macross".
Note: We have not been able to secure a copy for viewing, it seems only the follow on series, Macross II, is available in the U.S. Anyone out there who has seen it want to write us a brief review?