Akira Revisted

[Mosky_Kong]

So I went to my local library and I saw that they had the whole 6 volumes of the Akira Manga to check out. So I check out all 6 of them. I've seen the movie and its one of my favourites. Its actually one of the first animes I had ever seen in my life. But anyways, I'm currently on the third volume and I can't help but think what a great anime series this would have been. I know I'm about a few years off here but I just feel so compelled to start a topic on this. And it has been a few years since the movie came out. I think a series has to be done.

and sorry again for being a few years too late on this.

[nests]

Man I had been thinking the exact same thing for a while now. It would defently be awsome it wouldnt even take that many epiodes probably just 13 like many short series.
And they did bring back Ah! My Goddess so why not Akira

[Psyke]

I don't think we should have a new version of Akira or even a continuation. Just let it be a classic and stay that way.

[Mosky_Kong]

Have you read the manga?

[Psyke]

I saw it in a shopl before but never did read it. That was a long time ago......

[Mosky_Kong]

Well its very good and the movie is basically the whole story told in 2 hours. The manga all together is 2,000+ pages. The movie is by no means bad. I'm just saying there so much more to Akira that should be made in to an anime.

[Psyke]

It have have a lesser impact and audience if it was made into a series instead of a movie. Anyway, I will check it out if I see the manga again. i/expressions/face-icon-small-cool.gif

[complich8]

Series are less immersive. By taking the meat of the story, and condensing it to a 2 hour span, they make it more intense and more immersive.

Series are seldom that way, especially when they originally air on tv.

Think of Ghost in the Shell, and Read or Die. GitS went from a manga series to a variation on the manga themes, and was a great movie (albeit with mediocre voice acting). Stand Alone Complex, on the other hand, has to take away a lot of that impact the movie had to make discrete episodes, breaking it into bite-sized chunks that we can forget half of by next week without losing too much ground.

Read or Die was originally a 3-episode OVA. The 26 ep series again lost a lot of the density and impact of the original. Sure, it tells the manga story, but to be honest, the OVA kicks its ass on sheer interest, art quality, and density.

Both of those got away with it, however. Why? Because, they didn't tell the same story.

Akira, on the other hand, the movie follows a subset of the manga very closely. Deviate from that story and you aren't actually telling the Akira story, you're telling "here's some freaky people bummin' around Neo-Tokyo" or "here's some freaky transcendental telepathic shit goin down". Don't deviate from the story and you're rehashing an already well-known story, and watering it down.

I don't think it would work. But I guess I could be wrong. Still, I have to agree with Psyke: Let a classic be a classic.

[Y]

I agree that an Akira anime going along the manga timeline would be excellent.

That is, it WOULD be excellent had it been made back then, with the same sort of production values as the film and without the obvious nostalgia factor permeating everything. Current televised anime can't even begin to match the television production values of the late 80's - much less the production values of one of the most ludicrously well designed pieces of animation ever. The extremely lazy digital processing that creates TV animation now would absolutely destroy the style and feel of Akira, and I sure as hell don't want that.

Give it, say, a decade. Maybe by then we'll have studios that aren't churning out nothing but quick cash-in pieces. Then again, an Akira anime would almost certainly be propositioned as a cash-in attempt... so who knows if it will ever be possible.