Understanding Akira | The Pursuit of Power
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- Опубликовано: 17 июл 2024
- Akira is a Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and released in 1988 - met with critical success and hailed as a landmark of animation, we investigate what the film is really about in this video essay - while learnimg a bit about how it was made.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:52 Kaneda and Tetsuo
3:11 A Nuclear Allegory
4:17 Otomo and Akira
6:16 Power Corrupts
8:33 Bike and Cape
10:53 Akira's Visual Storytelling
14:09 Destruction and Reconstruction
15:55 Final Words
#akira #videoessay #film #anime 
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The absolute center of this film is the friendship between Kaneda and Tetsuo. The essence of the dichotomy between Kaneda and Tetsuo is Tetsuo is naturally timid, careful, and intoverted where Kaneda is bold, reckless, and extraverted.
They are opposites, but Kaneda is kid-hearted and saves Tetsuo from harm when they first meet. He is a natural leader. Tetsuo sees this and resents him and the care Kaneda shows him. He is perpetually emasculated by Kaneda, though Kaneda only is doing what he knows how to do. Knowledge of this does not stand in the way of Tetsuo's resentment.
He attempts to make up for it with skill and sneakiness, but this only gets him in trouble.
Tetsuo's deficit can be summed up in his inability to "corner" when turning a bike at high speeds. To do this, you have to get a "feel" for the way the tires "bite" into the asphalt. This cannot happen at low speeds. The forces are not great enough. To learn this, you must be willing to push the limits of your physical body and you must do away with your fear. If you succumb to your fear, you will try to slow the bike down as you enter the curve or else nit lean the bike over as much. Both of these lead to disaster as you will either flop over because the centripital force is not great enough to keep you above the ground, or you will rely upon your mechanical turning of the wheel to shift direction, which encourages incorrect balances on the bike resulting in an incomplete turn.
When Tetsuo gains access to great power, he believes he has all he needs to best Kaneda, but he is still missing that crucial element. Just as cornering on the bike requires a kind of "surrender" to the energies and forces at play, the power of Akira requires the same.
This is the same power that allows an artist to make fine art, an engineer to build a city, or ateam of artists to make a dazzling film. For this reason, the film is aesthetically complete. It shows within its core that which is on its surface.
Note that this power is also destructive. It allows for military mastery of a populus through manipulation and weaponry, holding institutional (political, religious, or educational) sway over a people, or using drugs to "ride a high", to say nothing of sex.
Though the film is clearly science fiction with a substantial sprinkling of body horror, we are all aware of how these forces come into play as we master or fail to master the changes that come over our bodies during adolescence, and later our minds as we enter adulthood. Mankind stretches with every passing age slightly nearer to the sky as we approach our ultimste powers. No one can say if when that happens we will have prepared ourselves through diligent meditation and caring for our fellow creatures or if when this power is granted it will find us grasping at nothing, scrambling wildly towards apocalyptic cataclysm.
Canada is so cool
Yeah I wish it would be a real place.
For real eh
🇨🇦 eh
In the words of Wayne, "Too much fun." 😎
If only it were real! 💀
only 117 subs? (I'm 118) keep it up man you'll be at 25k+ by 2025 with consistent content of this quality
Great video, dude. Loved the movie my whole life. I enjoyed your perspective of it.
i finally understand. Tetsuos transfiguration into that mammoth of a meat baby could be in relation to gaining too much power then realizing the consequences of it until the end. Having that in comparison with the nuclear bomb really makes sense to me. I love akira man
This was so well done. Great job
Otomo is such a good illustrator. Akira is such a good story and the movie is iconic, so his skills as an illustrator are underrated. His drawing skills are at the level of people like Kentaro miura. Tetsuo is a pretty deep and relatable character in some ways. I think his insecurity is a pretty realistic thing for most of us. Kaneda is such a good foil for him because kaneda symbolizes being above insecurity and believing in yourself no matter what kind of obstacles society puts in your way. He’s an embodiment of the rebellious spirit. I find kaneda to be one of the most inspirational characters of all time. Tetsuo and kaneda’s rivalry is one of the best anime rivalries and it’s often underrated. I feel like kaneda and tetsuo were an inspiration for goku and vegeta, especially because dbz became more sci-if than the earlier parts of the story when vegeta was introduced. Tetsuo always reminded me of vegeta because of how he looked when his hair spiked up but they’re also similar as characters. Both have a strong sense of honor but are cursed by an inferiority complex and they both have a rival that triggers their insecurities. Kaneda is pretty underrated as a protagonist because I consider him up there with the best protagonists of all time. He’s so charismatic and cool and he’s also very funny. He’s not some super smart or super powerful hero or anything but he’s an everyman and he possesses the best traits a regular person can have. More people should get into the manga because the movie is such a small part of the whole thing.
Thank you for posting to reddit. Great piece. I hope my friend will like Akira and I can watch your analysis with him :)
great video, looking forward to more of these
Loved your perspective on the story, this made me want to watch it again! Thank you so much!
another banger video bro, im loving this!
Dude, great video! Was always a fan of watching analysis of Akira, this one was done so well. Even in 2024 hearing the story told is still cathartic.
Fantastic academic work. Great essay.
Thanks so much for making this beautiful video! I tried to watch “Akira” a few times when I was younger, but I didn’t understand what was going on. However, thanks to your analysis, I do. I would love to check out more of your work. ❤❤❤
Thoughtful work Ulixes!
Your writing is notably smooth, as if you painstakingly wrestled with each syllable. Good job man. Really. Thanks for putting effort into your work, it’s not unnoticed. (Popped up on my YT suggestions alongside the usual tennis highlights and ski clips… glad it did)
-your work reached the High Rockies. (Vail, CO)
Good video, nice voice
This was an excellent breakdown of the film! Great work! 🔥
Nice video! You explained so well
Really good video. Watched straight thru. Subbed
Brilliant presentation, thank you
Great video, I like you others as well. Subscribed!
this is an amazing video
Thank you for this video
You should do a video on Ghost in Shell! Loved this analysis!
Great Video! I hope you know that you are destined for greatness
good content.
It also had a great soundtrack!
Literally Anakin's Tragedy and the Nelvaanian Prophecy of the Caves in Genndy's Clone Wars Saga
nice
👍
Anyone know what song is playing over the 'Power Corrupts' segment?
Hey, I'll find it for you in a little bit when I'm back home if you'd like (:
@@UlixesSpeaks I really appreciate that dude, great vid by the by! Always enjoy seeing Akira breakdowns.
@@TheGreatJon Thank you so much, you're too kind (: the song should be "Machine Learning" by Hertzium!
@@UlixesSpeaks thanks dude!
do you seen steamboy? it’s same author
It is well established that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We tend to forget, that so too does absolute powerlessness. #livewithoutfear
I've come to realize in recent years that this common phrase needs to be slightly altered. We see in Tetsuo what I mean when I say that power doesn't corrupt, nor absolute power corrupt absolutely.
What power does it reveal.
Oh Canada!!! 🇨🇦
Isn’t his name more like “ka-nay-da”???
I guess it depends on which language dub you listened to, if you go to 8:01 you can hear how he says Kaneda and that's the pronunciation I used.
You should compare the manga and the anime movie and how different the two themes are.
Akira was the first full-length feature anime film I saw, this video makes me wanna rewatch it - if I remember right it’s got a planned series that should be coming soon? Last I heard the production was stalled though, anyways good video
Thought it said fursuit of power
Imagine tho- fallout powerarmor but furry shaped
...
@@UlixesSpeaks sksk don’t act like i pissed on your snowcone
"kanayduh" not canada lmfaooo
It depends on which language dub you listened to, if you go to 8:01 you can hear how he says Kaneda and that's the pronunciation I used.
Nice vidéo. You could have gone deeper, but good job anyway.
"framerates, some as low as 12, some as high as 60."
Uhm... I would like to see some sources on that. As the film itself (not necessarily the drawings) is at 24 fps. So drawing 60 frames for a 24 fps project would just be incredibly wasteful. As there would not be any film negative frames between the ones we see that could record those extra frames.
If we instead are talking about the layers of animation, it becomes another matter. You can easily rack up 4 or 8 layers of cels per frame in some of the more intense crowd scenes where they could be doing multilayer animation. And they often did this in Akira to fake extra frames by staggering the timings. You could have the background pan at 24 fps and have the characters move in 12 fps. But you stagger them so that character A moves, then B, then A again and so forth. That way the frame has 24 frames of new motion but you saved half the drawings for other scenes.
Lets say you'd have a scene with 4 layers of animation. At 12 fps on each. That's 12 *4 drawings, 48 in total per second. Make the foreground two layers in 24 fps and you'd have 24*2+12*2=72 drawings per second. But it is a very weird way to count frames for animation.
In traditional film making, slow motion is achieved by over-cranking (running the film through at a higher frame rate) and then playing it back at a normal frame rate - usually 24fps.
Assuming this videos information is accurate, I think this is the reason for the varying frame rates. 60fps would result in 2.5x slow motion.