Let's save ourselves the trouble right now. I'm sorry to break all of your hearts but I must be honest, I don't love Akira. ::waits for angry protests:: In fact, Akira isn't one of my favorite movies. I find it to be an average movie at best. Ok, now that I have that off my chest let's delve into the plot. The plot? Don't ask me about the plot. I don't know what it's about. I was completely confused the first time I watched this movie and just about as confused the second time I watched this movie. But here are the basics that I picked up.

The setting is 30 years after World War 3 in Neo Tokyo. Now we have rebels everywhere in this run down Tokyo and some bike gangs who want to defy some authority. There is a bike gang with the leader Kaneda and the scrawniest weakest member of the bike gang is Testsuo who is picked on constantly. They kill clowns on their bikes, they get entangled into a political conspiracy, Tetsuo gets the psychic power known as Akira and gets pissed and blows things up. Then we have talk about humans as pure energy and all these other things. Yikes. Yeah, that's basically it. I could go into the plot more, but the story is so complicated that I would ruin things if you haven't seen it yet and ::sigh:: I really don't understand some of the many subplots.

I am not stupid, mind you. I do like complicated and intelligent movies but I was very, very confused. I understand the basic things of what was going on but this movie is just too complicated for it's own good. I mean all this stuff thrown into a two-hour movie. No. It doesn't work. Ghost in the Shell was complicated, Perfect Blue was VERY complicated but those movies were complicated in a good way. Akira is just complicated in a terrible way.

The crazy plot doesn't do much for me, but I did like what I could understand out of the plot. Akira does tie up the complicated elements rather well in a two-hour movie and nothing really seemed like it was out of place. Every scene and action felt required in this movie. There is no filler scenes or useless scenes. Everything is necessary in this movie, except the freaky ending. Well, let's go on with the bad things.

The voice acting is horrid. Kaneda's voice and emotions are so corny and bad, it's actually rather sad. The poor voice actor is probably huddling in a corner because everyone hates his voice acting. The voice for the girl is horrid and Tetsuo is pretty bad too. (TETSUO! KANEDA!) AND don't even get me started on the general. On the other hand, the wrinkly kids (you'll see) sound pretty good and the Louis Anderson look alike who flies in the glass hovercraft has a good voice too. The music is pretty lame. It just doesn't seem right for the scene that it is in. The action music is horrid. However, I know that the music and voices are being redone and Akira is being re-released in the theaters, so hopefully this problem will be fixed.

The ending is the only scene that I really disliked. It just gets too weird at the end and makes no sense at all. We have people turning into giant weird monsters and stuff. Ok... And then the end, the end that is terrible. "I am Tetsuo." Well, duh. I waited 2 hours just to hear I am Tetsuo?! The story also tends to drag a lot, to the point where the movie can get pretty boring and sleep inducing, unless you're totally into it. I don't know if it's bad pacing or what, but the action and drama, could've been better. Long stretches of drama and scientific talk started to irritate me.

The good things? Ok the character designs are cool. I like everything except for the unusually large forehead on Tetsuo and the characters in the bike gang are hard to tell apart, because they look the same. However, if I want to see blue haired, pretty girls and boys I can watch Sailor Moon, right? The action is great. There are lots of explosions and booms. The psychic battles are great too. While I was watching this movie, I said to myself, "It's too bad 'X' didn't have psychic battles like this."

The atmosphere is incredible. I felt like I was right in Neo Tokyo. The animation is fantastic. This movie is like over 10 years old but it looks incredible. And like I said, I did like what I could pick up from the story. It was interesting.

I recommend a rental. I know most of you have probably seen it already. However, if you like futuristic, violent (and I mean blood and guts icky violence.) then you should rent it because it's a classic anyway. It is a buy if you like complicated stuff and you can understand the movie. I really wanted to love this movie because it's a classic and everyone swears by Akira but it just isn't THAT good and is hindered by being way to complicated.

And really, I don't mind watching movies over and over again to understand something, for example, I've watched Ghost in the Shell at least 4 times and Perfect Blue at least 8, but I don't think I will be watching Akira again; it's boring and I find my eyes starting to shut when I get about halfway through it. ::snore::