Akira

Cast View all

	Mitsuo Iwata	Shôtarô Kaneda
	Nozomu Sasaki	Tetsuo Shima
	Mami Koyama	Kei
	Tessh Genda	Ryû
	Hiroshi Ôtake	Nezu
	Kôichi Kitamura	Lady Miyako
	Michihiro Ikemizu	Inspector
	Yuriko Fuchizaki	Kaori
	Masaaki Ôkura	Yamagata
	Tarô Arakawa	Eiichi Watanabe
	Takeshi Kusao	Kai
	Kazumi Tanaka	Army
	Masayuki Katô	Engineer Sakiyama
	Yôsuke Akimoto	Harukiya Bartender
	Masato Hirano	Yûji Takeyama
	Yukimasa Kishino	Mitsuru Kuwata
	Kazuhiro Kamifuji	Masaru (No. 27)
	Tatsuhiko Nakamura	Takashi (No. 26)
	Fukue Itô	Kiyoko (No. 25)
	Issei Futamata	Additional Voices
	Kôzô Shioya	Miyako Follower
	Michitaka Kobayashi	Additional Voices
	Hideyuki Umezu	Additional Voices
	Satoru Inagaki	Additional Voices
	Kayoko Fujii	Girl A

Crew View all

Director	Katsuhiro Otomo
Writer	Katsuhiro Otomo, Izo Hashimoto
Producer	Shunzo Kato, Yoshimasa Mizuo, Sawako Noma, Ryohei Suzuki
Musician	Shoji Yamashiro
Photography	Katsuji Misawa

Personal

Notes

WSR Narrative Review


Special Notes:
Also available in a two-disc Special Edition for $39.98 (#11568) and (#11537 - Limited Edition Collector’s Tin)

Story Synopsis:
Based on the graphic novel by Katsuhito Otomo, Akira is a tour de force anime achievement with extraordinary details. A classic science fiction set in Neo-Tokyo of 2019, the metropolis has risen from the ashes of WWIII. Childhood friends Tetsuo and Kaneda plunge into Neo-Tokyo’s darkest secret, when their motorcycle gangster encounters a corrupt military operation to retrieve an escaped subject. When Tetsuo is captured by the military and is exposed to governmental experiments, he is inadvertently turned into a powerful one-man apocalypse.

DVD Picture:
The THX® Digitally Mastered and anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 DVD exhibits excellent animated images. The picture is sharp and well defined. Colors are rich and bold, with vibrant reds, strong blues, and deep blacks. There are a few source element artifacts and occasionally noticed fine film grain, but overall the picture is quite solid, undoubtedly due to the extensive restoration. Edge enhancement is generally insignificant.

Soundtrack:
The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack is an impressive remastering effort, with notable dynamics and utilization of the spectral range to its advantage. The sense of spaciousness is uncanny throughout, and certainly serves to effectively involve the listener. This new soundtrack consists of newly incorporated ADR. Fidelity is quite remarkable despite the age of the original production. The English-dubbed dialogue is notably natural sounding, with an ambience that sounds nicely dovetailed into the visual sequences. With the prominent utilization of the surrounds, the audio convincingly fills up the listening space for a palpable sense of activity all around. Split surround separation is sometimes limited, owing to the source audio having mono surround. Deep bass is delivered to the soundtrack’s advantage with ample depth, and on occasion the .1 LFE comes alive for dramatic impact, along with extension below 25Hz. With a spatially active soundtrack that seems to dramatically open up the listening space, this is an exemplary re-purposing effort that is certainly a recommendation. The original Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is also included as a soundtrack option. (Perry Sun)

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