Editor’s note: Newsarama contributor and Olympics fan Seth Robison joins Blog@ to highlight “tangentially Olympic-related” comics and pop culture moments. You can read more from Seth on the Olympics at his blog Off The Podium.
by Seth Robison
“Tetsuo!”
Yell that in a room crowded with 20- to 30-somethings in America, and chances are that you’ll get the proper countersign back: “Kaneda!” The Japanese animated film Akira became a cult film sensation in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While it saw a limited theatrical release, Akira spread in a proto-viral manner on bootlegged VHS tapes and late night television.
While Akira started its life as a manga, it was the film that made the biggest waves — although if the massive six volumes were dropped into a pool, the effect would be the same. Unlike anything seen in western animation, Akira’s fluid look and excellent English dub made tens of thousands of fans and opened the door to Japanese pop culture. It laid the groundwork for the mass acceptance of the works of directors such as Hayao Miyazaki and TV series like Pokemon and Naruto, as well as the explosion of manga in bookstores and comic shops.
Part of what made Akira work was all the key anime notes it hit: rebellious teens, repressive government, telekinetic powers, futuristic vehicles (motorcycles in this case) and the post-apocalyptic setting of Neo-Tokyo in the year 2019. Thirty years previous, a mysterious explosion destroyed old Tokyo and trigged a nuclear World War Three. And on the night that two motorcycle gang members, the smug leader Shotaro Kaneda and the mousy follower Tetsuo Shima, run across an escaped government experiment, everything changes, leading up to a dramatic battle at the future stadium of the 2020 Neo-Tokyo Olympic Games.
A live-action, Americanized Akira has been in development hell for some time. As recently as February, unfounded internet rumors (the most reliable kind) have cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kaneda and Tetsuo in Neo-Manhattan, as if New York City hasn’t been through enough at the box office. The real question is how this new movie will affect the Akira drinking game:
Hic! I need to lay down…
