The redub only weirded me out on the first watch, but people lost their shit over that.
Somehow I only saw the Japanese language version (is there 2 of those too?) when it was played as a midnight movie a year back.
My favorite Akira-watching experience was when a local theater screened a laserdisc copy, complete with the break to flip the disc, a couple years back. The theater was actually in my old elementary school auditorium which made the whole thing even weirder.
I think the reason for the redubs was to have voice tracks in Dolby 5.1, so I imagine most 1988-era dubs were redone when the movie was rereleased.
is the akira production report worth watching? i remember in the 90s, there was one of those massive double-sized VHS cases with the movie itself and the production report in it. but i only had a subbed copy of the movie taped from tv that was missing the first couple of minutes. for some reason i remember the old dub with liquid snake as tetsuo more though.
what was her reading of it? i remember during the turn-of-the-century anime boom, there was a documentary on tv (at about 2am) about sexual themes in anime, and on that, helen mccarthy said that akira was all about male puberty
dont be a baby just read it flipped
As I recall I watched the production report dubbed into english and they gave some of the crew really weird redneck accents for some reason. I canât remember much else of the content though.
The main problem with the movie is that it lacks Chiyoko, who is basically Arnold Schwarznegger crossed with a housemaid
My strongest recollection is tha she made a big deal about the bike as a symbol of empowerment, and Iâm assuming she tied tht in to the themes of mankind in generalâlike Tetsuoâseeking seductive power which it is ultimately too immature to control (atomic weapons) I remember her overall being pretty forward with gendering things as male power fantasies, so I assume she viewed it through that lens and probably talked about adolesence and therefore maybe puberty. You can prbably find a PDF of the book somwhere, since itâs old and about anime.
Huh. Turns out Napier pretty much just talks about puberty as well and never focuses on the obvious parable: http://media.espora.org/mgoblin_media/media_entries/1532/Anime_from_Akira_to_Princess_Mononoke__Experiencing_Contemporary_Japanese_Animation.pdf
Of course, the chapter is on the relationship between body horror and adolescence. So I guess the nuclear anxiety angle wasnât strictly relevant.
I read the age issue as being more a societal thing than a puberty thing. Itâs Japanâs aging population feeling uncomfortable with the generation gap and eventually ceding control. The old folks are military, government, and religious figures, while the young folks are portrayed as wild, criminal, and embrace/merge with technology.
Suicide Circle also does the aging Japanâs anxieties thing.
Yeah, one of the things I love about that movie is that the answer to the Super Mysterious Central Mystery that fuels the abandoned detective plot isâŚ
They used the internet.
Duh.
I know there are more mysteries after that, but the movie honestly starts with asking, "How can so many kids from different schools be coordinating in this way? The short answer is, âThereâs a website.â The long answer is something along the lines of, âDiscourse has an effect on our psyches to an extent that we donât full accept, because weâre never truly conscious of it.â
A big part of that movie is pointing out that the essentialist, modernist way of viewing the world was never really accurate and is becoming increasingly irrelevantâsomething that felt more dramatic and generational in 2001.
Yeah, donât forget that delinquency was a hot topic in Japan in the late 70âs, early 80âs. Iâve never been fully aware of whether that was in response to a current social phenomenon or a throwback to the post-war years.
And if it was a current phenomenon, was it real or just public perception? Like, were the rates of delinquency in Japan actually higher in the late 70âs? 'Cause, I mean, that would be weird: adolescent delinquency is usually the result of societal disruption leading to the breakdown of support networks (basically: broken homes). WW2 led to a rise in delinquency. The crack epidemic led to a rise in delinquency.
So what happened in the 70âs in Japan that caused delinquency? And maybe the answer is that there wasnât a rise in delinquency, and it was just a popular meme at the time.
I actually ended up buying some academic books on Japanese delinquency in order to answer this question, but of course once they arrived I barely cracked them open, and now theyâre not in Thailand with me.
If anybody actually knows anything about this stuff or wants to do good research, Iâd love to hear about it. In my research, I learned that Japanâs loose caste system is more of a reality than I ever imagined, with regard to working class people.
This research was actually inspired by my last rewatch of Akira, so I also tracked down stuff about bike gangs in Japan and found that they really were a creature of the 80âs, and itâs sort of a dying familial, gang culture now. There seems to be exactly one half decent documentary on the subject, which I think you pretty much have to buy on DVD.
When I was briefly teaching middle school there was a pretty clear cut rule that as soon as a kid was on campus you couldnt deny their ability to learn but also there was no real punishment system.
70s Youth had the same hotblooded idealism as American youth it got crushed by the system. So 80s youth if they did ârebelâ there really wasnt a cause either way.
If you look up how clean cut and presented most TV and then culture was in 80s Japan being a deliquent wouldnt exactly be hard.
Before I make a fool of myself someone remind me which Blue Hearts song was controversal? I want to say it was one of them about how nuclear weapoms exhist. But in this topic it would make senss it was shonen no uta.
This has long been my guess, actually.
Was/is meth big in Japan? Was it made from Sudafed or synthesized some other way? Salary man work drug, or delinquents themselves?
Someday I will need to talk to a Japanese sociologist, I guess.
I think itâs more trucker speed pills than blue sky. Retro meth.
I recommend watching the documentary on bosozoku called Godspeed You! Black Emperor for an insight into the delinquent youths
Guess where meth was invented BHM you get one guess.
Innnn Germany?
No wait that guess doesnât count
Yeah guess I should have said sudafed. OKAYSORRY
