Akira Poster # 1 Shotaro Kaneda Katsuhiro Otomo Cyberpunk Anime

Description

Akira is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, and featuring the voices of Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, and Taro Ishida. The screenplay is based on Otomo’s manga Akira, focusing mainly on the first half of the story. The film depicts a dystopian version of Tokyo in the year 2019, with cyberpunk tones. The plot focuses on teenage biker Tetsuo Shima and his psychic powers, and the leader of his biker gang, Shotaro Kaneda. Kaneda tries to prevent Tetsuo from releasing the imprisoned psychic Akira. The film became a hugely popular cult film and is widely considered to be a landmark in Japanese animation. Shotaro Kaneda is the protagonist of Akira. He is a brash, carefree teenage delinquent and the leader of a motorcycle gang known as The Capsules. Kaneda is best friends with Tetsuo, a Capsule member whom he’s known since childhood, but that friendship is shattered after Tetsuo gains and abuses his psychic powers. He becomes involved with the underground resistance and falls in love with their member Kei. During the events of volume 3, Kaneda is enveloped by the explosion caused by Akira and according to Lady Miyako, he is beyond this world. Kaneda returns at the end of volume 4, and along Joker, Kaisuke and Kei, they take down Tetsuo. Most anime is notorious for cutting production corners with limited animation, such as having only the characters’ mouths move while their faces remained static. Akira broke from this trend with detailed scenes, pre-scored dialogue (wherein the dialogue is recorded before the film starts production and the movements of the characters’ lips are animated to match it) – a first for an anime production – and super-fluid motion as realized in the film’s more than 160,000 animation cels.

Near mint condition.