Akira

Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animation is set in 2019, in the Neo-Tokyo built after the old city was destroyed. Tetsuo, from a motorcycle gang, is taken by the army after a crash, and the power a secret programme wakes in him grows past anyone’s control. The film explains almost nothing, for a reason: Otomo had not finished his manga. The story stops near the midpoint of the comic, Lady Miyako shrinks to a cameo, and Akira, who wakes in the flesh on the page, is here only preserved tissue. Sound came before picture twice over. The dialogue was recorded before the animation and the mouths drawn to the recording, the reverse of Japanese habit then. Geinoh Yamashirogumi recorded the score before animation began and scenes were cut to the music; Otomo chose the group after hearing their album Ecophony Rinne and asked for two ideas only, festival and requiem. The budget was beyond one studio, so Kodansha, Toho, TMS and others formed a partnership, a structure later ordinary in anime. A good fit if you want to catch things like the hoarding counting down to the 2020 Neo-Tokyo Olympics, reading “with everyone’s support, let’s make this a success”, with “just cancel it” sprayed underneath. Not for viewers who need the ending to resolve: the answers were left in the manga.