Is the Akira 25th Anniversary Blu-ray worth the upgrade?

When I was a kid in the early ’90’s, late at night on the weekends, I’d spend hours running through every zone and position I could possibly get my parent’s massive satellite dish.  This was, more often than not, in the hopes of finding a channel that might show a glimpse of boobs or maybe if I was really lucky a late-night re-run of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  However the best thing that I ultimately stumbled upon was an incredible new style of animation from Japan called “anime,” and “Akira” along with some random episodes of a show called “Dirty Pair” were the first anime these obscure late-night satellite stations would broadcast.

“Akira” is still my favorite film to this day and it presents a seamless blend of science-fiction, horror, action, and dark comedy.  In a dystopian future a bike gang comes into contact with a government weapon that represents a massive leap in human evolution.  One of the bikers, an incredibly angry teen named “Tetsuo,” begins to manifest this new power and unleash it upon a society that is already at the brink of collapse. 

The story of “Akira” is incredibly complex in the way it is presented, in that the nothing is explained directly and everything that needs to be understood about the plot and the characters has to be gathered much more indirectly than something you would see in a Western movie.   Being impossible to understand on an initial viewing, Akira becomes a purely visual and musical experience, however on continued viewings of the film, more layers of the story are revealed, which makes re-watching the movie a very rewarding experience.   However at the heart of “Akira” is the relationship between the protagonist “Tetsuo” and his surrogate big-brother “Kaneda.”  Tetsuo is furious at always being treated like a child and now that he has the power of Akira he wants to lash out at all of humanity, while Kaneda feels an enormous sense of responsibility toward his little brother, to the point where he is driven to try to kill him. 

I’ve bought “Akira” on three formats and this blu-ray is certainly the best version of the movie available.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but the blu-ray comes with a DVD copy and the colors on the blu-ray are noticeably richer and brighter than the DVD version.  However this is such an old film that the blu-ray is not nearly as crisp as modern anime, which tends to look really amazing in high-definition.  The sound is great, which is highlighted by the film’s amazing soundtrack, although I believe it is the same quality of sound as the 2001 version of the DVD. 

I don’t know what is next for “Akira” but modern animation has come so far since this film’s inception that I would love to see this movie re-animated, or a new version that follows the original comic or “manga” version of the story.  After seeing the recent found-footage film “Chronicle,” which in a lot of ways is an homage to “Akira,” I honestly don’t have any burning desire to see the live-action version of the film, which has been stuck in production hell for well over a decade.

Special features:  There isn’t anything really spectacular in the extra features, which mostly seem to be recycled from past releases.  There is an interview with the director which originally came on the laser-disk version of the movie and there is also an eleven minute short about restoring and dubbing the film which came on the 2001 DVD release.   Neither of these are particularly interesting.  The most worthwhile extra is a twenty minute short that talks about making the film’s futuristic soundtrack, but unfortunately it is mostly rehashing scenes of the movie instead of showing the writing or recording process.  Since this is the 25^th anniversary of the film I was hoping for something more substantial like commentary tracks, or possibly interviews talking about the impact of “Akira” in popular culture and animation, or a modern interview with the director reflecting on the legacy of the film. 

Bottom Line:  The “Akira” blu-ray is a noticeable upgrade from the DVD format, and it will likely be the last physical copy of “Akira” we’ll see before movie watching is all done through online streaming.  Fans of anime are notoriously fickle about how anime is dubbed, and people who are attached to the original VHS dub will be happy to know that version, the 2001 English dub, and the Japanese dub are all available to watch.  This blu-ray is about $15 now which is a fair price, but even though this is my favorite film, and the blu-ray is a decent upgrade from the DVD, I’m not sure that this is a big enough of an upgrade from the 2001 version that it would have been worth buying if I hadn’t lost my last DVD copy.