The American Akira

By
on

Can’t wait for the live-action version Akira that Leonardo DiCaprio is currently producing? Here’s a satirical version showing what would happen if Akira were made by Americans. I was unable to dig up details on who made it. Please post in the comments if you know.

Also in Cartoon Brew...

  • Mel Brooks Talks
    About Ernest
    Pintoff’s “The

    melbrooks-critic

  • Scooby-Doo Performs
    on Fox News

    scoobyfox

  • Meet the First
    (Stone Age)
    Animators

    cave-animation
  • http://www.chumwad.com Derek M

    This is so true!

  • MattSullivan

    AKIRA is about 45 minutes too long. I wish people would stop worshipping that film..like it’s so freakin precious.

  • Jim W

    It’s Harry Partridge. He does a bunch of flash vids for newgrounds. http://www.youtube.com/user/HarryPartridge

    His shorts are very well done and entertaining as well :)

  • http://kitschensyngk.deviantart.com/ Kitschensyngk

    So in this movie Neo-Tokyo will resemble Times Square…?

  • http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.com Cory Gross

    A hearty “amen” goes out to MattSullivan… There are so many better anime out there than the pointless mess of WTF that is “Akira” (there’s even WTFier ones). I grant that tastes and interests vary, but when you load the big pile of pretty nothing that was “Steamboy” on top of it, you see the one trick that Katsuhiro Otomo’s pony does and wonder “why”.

  • http://www.chumwad.com Derek M

    Akira was a lot of people’s first exposure to theatrical adult Anime. I know it was mine and I felt it redefined what animation could be. violent, gripping, epic, dark, scary

    It set a tone that other films animated and live action have been chasing after ever since.
    I’m not saying it’s perfect, but you can’t argue with the technical skill and attention to detail. It’s a beautiful film and made a big impression back when there was nothing else like this, don’t forget this came out in 1988.

    Compared to American releases in 1988 were Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Land Before Time, and Oliver and Company. With the exception of Roger Rabbit, I wouldn’t exactly call any of that breakthrough material.

  • http://www.cementimental.com Tim Drage

    I was mildly amused. :)

    Insert 100+ dire and ignorant comments about Akira here:

  • Rodrigo

    Meh. This parody was confused. At points it makes fun of the didactic themes targeted towards younger audiences, and then quickly shifts to having politically incorrect inserts. Besides this, most of the other jokes were so overt, they felt embarrassing.

  • http://www.mattmos.com Matt Morris

    Tetsuo? Travis, surely ;)

  • James

    Have to agree with Rodrigo. It also seems to (inadvertently?) target anime, specifically in the nonsensical dialogue and the art-style, with the monstrous representation of the token minority character.

  • Daniel J. Drazen

    My problem with “Akira” is that four or five times I expected it to just END ALREADY, but it kept piling on!

  • george

    i thought the pronunciation of kaneda was the best part

  • http://www.woweh.com Kelly

    Ha ha! Oh man…it’s funny ’cause it’s true.
    I appreciate AKIRA for it’s animation and visual style; the first time I watched it I couldn’t have been more than 12 years old….scraed the crap outta me. o_O;
    I personally thought the parody was done quite well. I’m a bit of an anime ‘purist’ myself (I watch anime w/subtitles and original jap. audio), and watching dubbed crap on YTV sounds EXACTLY like this.
    Quite a while ago, I saw the first episode of ‘Inuyasha’ translated, and the main character was literally like ‘My name is Ka-go-mee Higura-ashi!’ SO AMERICAN IT HURTS. LOL.

  • Steve Gattuso

    I look forward to this with all the joy of appendicitis.

  • Steph’

    Wasn’t the “big thing” in Japan about Akira being one of the first major anime to do lip synch? Which was, of course, basically lost on the majority of the American audience, who just knew it was THE biggest thing in anime when it came out. I remember not being terribly impressed with it until I found that out and then it was “oh, so that’s why it was such a big deal.”

  • http://www.mynameispj.com PJ

    I dunno, I haven’t seen the original Akira in years, so I don’t know how well its held up, but I remember being pretty impressed. Of course I was enjoyed with the animation and the detail work (although I’ve never been a big fan of over-the-top gore), but I also immensely enjoyed the storyline. It was dark and gripping and I particularly enjoyed the primary conflict in the film between Tetsuo and Kaneda. There was something about that friends-turned-enemies plot line that was done really well, especially when you saw at the end how much they still cared for each other. I thought that was a pretty strong conflict to revolve the rest of the movie around.

    Im starting to ramble away from the subject of animation, but I also enjoyed that Akira’s back story pretty ambiguous–it didn’t always come out and tell you exactly what was happening, but instead required you to pay a lot of attention and piece together the details yourself from the clues they dropped. However, I also enjoyed the ambiguous plots of the Jacob’s Ladder film and the Silent Hill games (not the movie), so maybe that tells you something about my tastes.

  • droosan

    Steph’ .. 1984′s Macross the Movie: Do You Remember Love which was the first anime film to bother with lip-synch (though, IIRC, only for Lynn Minmei’s singing scenes).

    As for Akira .. it’s a stunning film to look at, certainly .. and its soundtrack still sounds ground-breaking, 20 years later .. but from a storytelling perspective, the movie amounts to less than a ‘Cliff Notes’ version of the manga.

  • http://itcamefromspace.blogspot.com Stone

    For pete’s sake, just laugh at the darn thing. and stop trying to up your street cred on dissing a movie that, quite frankly, cannot be denied for what it was at the time it was created. an animated revelation in terms of quality and how big a departure it was from what animated films typically were in the 1980′s.

    btw. read the books that Akira was adapted from. far better and it’s very understandable how the movie ended up the way it did since it barely covered the first 1 and 1/2 books. That’s what happens when you attempt to cram 6 volumes into 2 hours. Also consider the cultural differences in storytelling conventions where, generally speaking, everything is spelled out for the audience in Western films and many idiosyncrasies are lost in translation.

    Domu is another good read from Otomo. First non-novel to win the sci-fi literature award in Japan where they promptly changed the rules afterward because god forbid a comic should be ranked on the same level as novels. Saying Otomo was a one trick pony certainly denies the reality of his breadth of work that doesn’t JUST include animation.

  • http://www.madmind.de/ Gunther

    Let’s just hope that the live action version of Akira will be as visually groundbreaking as the anime. I am thinking of a next Matrix here and the original material surely offers enough possibilities to do that. In terms of storytelling the live action version can only be better than the anime. I won’t go as far as Matt to say the anime was too long but more go like “It felt too rushed” due to the massive manga.

    Although I have seen the parody some time before it still manages to makes me smile. It is so true and so wrong on so many levels.

  • Donald Rumsfeld

    If anything this funny clip reflects whats wrong with US cinema today.
    Whats more, it shows whats wrong with USofA today. Large shortage of original ideas. Dont think Mr. Obama will change that. If you think he will you are in for a surprise. I would love for Mr. Leonardo to prove me wrong. I think however his Akira will look like that clip we just saw. Even worse perhaps. Whats the point of redoing a fine
    film? The promise to maybe cash in on some nostalgic dollars.
    Refrying old ideas? Just like Mr. Obama with his new/old defence secretary. ;)

  • Johnny Luu

    Akira is one of the greatest examples of cinematic animation in history to date. Whether or not you like the story, which is entirely subjective like most forms of entertainment, animation-wise there is stuff in that movie that is exemplary of what it is, visually, to make a feature length animation for cinematic release.

    As far as the live action Akra goes, I don’t really see the point.

  • Larry T

    btw. read the books that Akira was adapted from. far better and it’s very understandable how the movie ended up the way it did since it barely covered the first 1 and 1/2 books. That’s what happens when you attempt to cram 6 volumes into 2 hours.

    I totally agree with this statement. I had read most of the books before I ever saw the movie. The books will blow your mind away… messed up storyline, fantastic artwork, gratituous gore and magnificent penmanship…. storytelling at its best. The movie did do a great job of translating some of that WTF-ness to the screen and was visually fascinating as well.

    But hey- I guess many people have succummed to the brainless spoonfed dictation which is American Animation, which is why this sort of thing would appeal to anyone.

    The real point of all this is why bother remaking it unless someone thinks they can do a better job? And what classifies as a ‘better’ job? It seems all remakes are for is to ‘fix’ something in the original and re-interpret it so further audiences get misinformed portions of the real storyline.

    Funny parody… and thumbs down to DiCaprio.

  • bob

    a live action movie will never be as good as the animated movie. half the movie is going to computer animated anyway.

  • Brannigan’s Law

    The first 15 minutes of Akira will always be my lasting introduction into the world of Anime. A world that has it’s ups and downs, but can hardly ever be called unimaginative. From Crayon Shin Chan to Kiki’s Delivery Service… it’s all wonderful as far as I’m concerned, and has only given American animation something to learn from and reflect upon.

  • David Breneman

    Reminds me of a bit from “Family Guy”. And that’s not a compliment.

  • http://www.sterlingsheehy.com Sterling Sheehy

    lOl Oh man that was so awesomely bad! I’d love to see the entire movie done in parody form like this. In my head I imagine watching it in a really bad theater with people yelling out the lines before they happen. Of course everyone is drunk. It would be a patrioticly-action-comedy-apple pie good time. I’d pay my 2 bucks.

  • http://merks-art.blogspot.com Tim Merks

    This was really funny. I also like his “Bye old mechanic man” short. It’s dumb as hell but a good laugh.
    As for Akira a great purchase is the book “Akira: Animation Archives” you can really see the absolutely amazing skill and detail that went into to creating that movie. My favourite bits are the animation keys of crowd shots and the insanity of that scene at the Olympic stadium where the pipes were swinging around billowing out smoke. If you love animation you should definitely check that out. On that note the Groundwork books from Gainax studios are good reference books as well for that kind of stuff.

    Akira is absolutely fantastic and it will forever be my favourite film. It still holds up today against anything being produced. I’m really looking forward to the blue ray release as I read somewhere they shot it on 70mm. So I can’t wait to see those backgrounds in high def glory.
    Also worth checking out are the omnibus films done by the akira team. “Memories” of course and the fantastic Robot Carnival with Koji Morimoto’s shot ‘Frankengears’

  • Tony

    David Breneman said: “Reminds me of a bit from “Family Guy”. And that’s not a compliment.”

    I think that was the point if I’m not mistaken.

  • david mathis

    Does anyone know why the original Akira ani. was tamperd with between vhs and dvd? and where can i watch it online?