In July, 1988, the city of Tokyo, Japan, was destroyed by a nuclear explosion. The blast leads to World War III a few hours after.
31 years later, gangs are terrorizing Neo-Tokyo, a city on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay near the old city of Tokyo. Troubled youths are placed into a foster system where the adults in charge are a bit rough with them.
One of these children, "Tetsuo" (voiced by Joshua Seth) is taken to a secret location where he is subject to experiments studying his awakening ESP powers.
"Tetsuo's" powers grow as the movie progresses. He is slowly uncontrollable, and there may be only one thing that can stop him -- the one known as "Akira."
Considered by many critics as one of the greatest animated movies of all time. It helped the sudden boom of popularity of Japanese Anime (aka Japanimation) the genre had in the Western hemisphere back in the 1990's.
The animation is absolutely beautiful. The use of mostly darker colors sets a mood wonderfully. Like most Anime, the characters appear to be from the West instead of Japanese and are drawn nicely. The movement of the characters, at times, makes you forget that they are cartoons. Also, the characters' mouths seem to be in perfect synch with the English voices, but it is obvious that their animated for the original Japanese dialogue.
A note to parents: this is not Pokemon. There is strong language, violence and a lot of blood. I would suggest that you only allow older children who are pretty well out of the Pokemon phase before you allow them to see this. It is not for the Pokemon crowd.
I am personally not an hard core Anime fan. However, I am a science-fiction fan, and this is pretty much a sci-fi movie. However, there really isn't a lot of science-fiction elements like futuristic weapons or futuristic technology. We do get a futuristic science though, which is a major plot device that works well.
Somehow, the actors have some good on-screen chemistry and make the characters pretty believable. You can actually believe that they are on screen together through out the movie.
Personally, I wouldn't put it on my "Must See" list. But, if you can catch it on HBO or even on On Demand like I did, you might not be disappointed.