The anime Akira – the most influential cyberpunk film of all time – is back on the big screen, in a 4K-restored version. This ominous vision of the future is set in Neo-Tokyo in 2019(!) and immediately became a cult classic.
Katsuhiro Otomo adapted his own popular manga cartoons for his animated film Akira, which in 1988 opened the floodgates to the West for Japanese anime and manga. Almost forty years on, Akira is still as overwhelming as it was back then. In 1988, many viewers (particularly in the West) had no idea what they were seeing: a breathtaking dystopian world in which youth gangs on hyper-cool motorbikes terrorise a pitiless Neo-Tokyo, and the army carries out sinister experiments on children.
