Review for Akira (Review)

Page 1 Page 2

Introduction
I don't know how I fell in love with anime. Certainly I have always loved animation, ever since I was a little boy, and I didn't discriminate in what I watched. Among those many animations certainly were anime, although I had no idea, and neither did I care where shows like Mysterious Cities of Gold, or Ulysses 31 originated. A key moment in the development of my obsession came twenty years ago. I can't recall if it was over one weekend, or two successive weekends, but BBC2 broadcast two anime feature films. Two films which burned the word 'anime' into my awareness, never to leave, and which introduced me to the amazing possibilities of this art form. The films were The Wings of Honneamise, and Akira. After that, I couldn't get enough of the stuff, with Channel 4's Late Licence inducing me to spend more of my student grant than I could anticipate on animated videotapes. Then the first anime boom went bust.

It was ten years ago that I first delved into the world of digital video, and one of the earliest DVDs that I bought was Akira, newly remastered, newly re-dubbed, and looking absolutely stunning. I could finally put away my carefully nursed 10-year-old VHS recording. That heralded the second boom in anime entertainment, a boom that is still going strong today. Now another ten years have passed, and it may just be time to ditch the DVD. For this is Manga Entertainment's 20th birthday. They've been selling anime as long as I've been fascinated by it. They've decided to celebrate by re-issuing Akira, the breakthrough and timeless anime classic that introduced this fantastic art form to the West, and it's finally getting the upgrade to Blu-ray, with high definition visuals, and a 'hypersonic' audio track. In another ten years, I expect to be able to pipe Akira directly into my brain, bypassing my eyes and ears completely.

After World War III and the destruction of Tokyo in 1988, reconstruction and regeneration have resulted in the metropolis of Neo Tokyo rising from the ashes. Society has rebuilt also and on the surface, the world seems to have healed from its wounds. But the fervour for reconstruction has faded by 2019 and Neo Tokyo's populace is beginning to show the strains, with anti-government demonstrations and terrorism rife. The youth are disaffected and rebellious, and it's one particular gang on which the story concentrates. Kaneda leads his motorbike gang against the notorious Clowns in a familiar turf war, resulting in confrontation and violence that the beleaguered police are hard put to contain. During one particular confrontation, Kaneda's childhood friend, Tetsuo is injured when the sudden appearance of a strange wizened child surprises him and his motorbike crashes.

The military, from whom the child has been kidnapped come to rescue him and take Tetsuo as well. They have been conducting experiments in psychic abilities in children since before the war and the wizened child is one of their subjects. Examining Tetsuo, they find that he has abilities beyond anything they currently possess and administer the appropriate drugs to awaken these latent abilities. While Kaneda and a young terrorist girl, Kei attempt to break into the military lab to rescue Tetsuo, his abilities manifest with frightening rapidity, he finds himself unable to cope with these strange powers and goes on the rampage. When he faces a group of the psychic children in mental combat, he learns of one stronger than him, the mysterious Akira.

Picture
The 1080p 1.85:1 widescreen image is lush. I certainly didn't spot any transfer issues like colour banding, aliasing, compression or noise. What we get here is a faithful reproduction of the film elements. It's clear, sharp, colourful throughout, and Akira has never looked as fine in terms of home cinema. Detail levels are stupendous, the sheer vision and imagination leaps off the screen, and the richness and variety of colour here puts the previous DVD transfer to shame. You will get the expected film grain; there is the odd moment of print damage, the occasional scratch, white flecks in darker scenes, and the odd moment of softness. This is after all a film nudging 25 years now, an old-fashioned cel acetate animation. The source material is always going to have issues, occasional cine-wobble, an odd warp in the print in one scene, there's very little you can do without a ridiculous degree of restoration (beyond that already accomplished by Pioneer in 2001). You'll also notice now the comparatively limited palette of colours, an issue when the images had to be physically painted, rather than created from the infinite variety available from a computer program. Akira was also revolutionary in the way that it used nighttime scenes, notoriously difficult to animate. Now you can see a comparative lack of detail in the darker images, again something foreign to modern digital animation techniques. One slight annoyance is that the image is letterboxed, apparently to counter overscan, but hardly an issue on modern sets.

Images are sourced from the PR and aren't necessarily representative of the final retail disc.

Sound
Besides, if you are going to spend extra money on Akira, best do it here, on the audio. You have the choice between Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese and English, and a DD 5.1 Japanese track for those without HD audio capabilities, and an LPCM Japanese stereo track, for purists who want Akira the way it was originally released. This is the reason to buy Akira on Blu-ray. The previous DVD gave good English, DD 5.1, but the Japanese was a disappointing stereo track. For the Blu-ray, we get a 'Hypersonic' Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese track. If I quote some numbers here, that means that the audio was sampled at 192 kHz at 24-bit resolution. In comparison, the Dolby TrueHD English track here, like most High Definition audio is recorded at 48 kHz 16-bit resolution. Just like your average movie, that will peak at around 5 or 6 Mbits per second. The Japanese Dolby TrueHD audio on the other hand peaks in the mid 20s, 25 Mbits per second. In practice the bit rate of the audio often exceeds the bit rate of the video. That's unprecedented, and it's why Akira, on a relatively barebones disc, still has to be dual layer.

What does that really mean? It means the first thing you do is that you turn down your volume if you at all respect your neighbours. What was originally a stereo feature has now become a fully immersive experience. Akira now makes full use of the 5.1 soundstage to put you right in the middle of the action, and the sound design is breathtaking. The action is resonant, explosions, gunfire, and motorbike chases are all recreated with vigour and vibrancy. The music is so wondrous and rich, that even though I have seen this film a dozen times and more, it really was like watching it for the first time last night. I was hearing sounds, recognising instruments, and vocal nuances that I never even knew existed. And through it all, the dialogue remains as clear as a bell.

I sampled the English track, and it's as good, technically speaking, as your average high definition audio track. If English audio is what you desire, then it will provide a superior experience to the DVD. It's just that in comparison to that Japanese audio…

The problem here is that we also get the legacy of that previous DVD release. We get the Pioneer dub, as opposed to the first Streamline dub, which many fans still have a preference for. We also get the pseudo-dubtitles again, although thankfully, the HOH elements have been removed. I never have to see (wind howls), or (dog barks) again. Normally I'm a dedicated hater of subtitles that follow the English dub, or as in this case, an earlier version of the dub script, but the problem for English listeners turns out to be the salvation of those who prefer the original audio. The Pioneer dub is simply too close a translation of the Japanese dialogue. Other than the odd colloquialism, it's stilted, awkward and sounds less natural than you would expect. It is why you won't hear me whining about dubtitles when it comes to Akira.

You also have the option of Japanese subtitles, a legacy of the original 2009 Blu-ray release.

Next Page Add Your Own Comment