This was one of the films i watched for my contextual studies essay research as it was a good example of a cyberpunk film in the postmodern era. Although i had many films to choose from, i chose Akira in particular because i felt it would be a good non western-centric perspective of the cyberpunk genre. After watching it, i was glad i had chosen it as it was such a good narrative about the socioeconomic debates in post-war Japan, with beautiful imagery and effective visual storytelling that must have been amazing to watch in 1988, and still holds up well today. The production design of Neo Tokyo, the city where the film takes place is absolutely fantastic, and there have been whole museum exhibitions dedicated to displaying the work of the designers. The film itself is iconic, regarded as one of the greatest animated movies of all time and credited with increasing the popularity of anime in western countries. Many contemporary western creatives also cite it as an influence in their work, influencing famous productions like Star Wars, The Matrix and The Dark Knight, among many others. It also deals with a lot of themes that were common in postmodernism, such as the invasive development of information technology, the decentering and fragmentation of the individual and the confronting the attempts to erase a sense of history in favour of fascination with surface-level values.
Comments