One enduring experience for those of us who went to elementary school in the 1950s was having to watch films of what occurs during a nuclear blast.
I can still remember the vision of a mushroom cloud snaking up into the sky and the subsequent hurricane-type force of wind blowing across a desert landscape, leveling everything in its path. What disturbed me the most was seeing a family of mannequins, which could have been my own family, disintegrating in the face of the nuclear storm.
That image resonates as I recall my fellow students at Calk Elementary School in Corpus Christi, Texas, crouching beneath our desks, trying to follow the directions of our hapless teachers to face away from the classroom windows.
Now, trauma is a popular word among today’s pop psychologists and influencers. But beneath all the social posturing, it is a real phenomenon. And if those of us who were raised under the specter of nuclear Armageddon were affected by the weight of that fear, as we were, imagine what the effect was on the culture that, so far, has been the only target of a nuclear blast.
I’m referring, of course, to Japan, which in 1945 was hit not once but twice by nuclear devices carried by U.S. B-29 bombers. If you’ve ever seen the several films featuring the raging monster Godzilla, you’ve witnessed one of the enduring effects that those two blasts had on Japanese culture, art being a central way for any society to work out its universally felt social wounds.
Here’s another more complicated example of that same artistic process: Beginning in 1982, the Japanese artist/writer Katsuhiro Ōtomo published a series of mangas – a Japanese form of graphic novel – that he titled Akira. When finished in 1990, it amounted to six volumes and a total of 120 chapters.
Realizing that the full impact of his art could be realized only in animation, Ōtomo proposed to adapt Akira into a movie. And in 1988, after producing his film on a $10 million budget, Ōtomo oversaw its release first in Japan and then a year later in the United States.
Critics in this country were, for the most part, overwhelmed. And rightfully so. A first viewing of what Ōtomo achieved – which has been re-released in a newly remastered 4K format – is a daunting experience. And it’s easy to see how influential the film has been on ensuing generations of filmmakers.
Set in 2019, Akira follows a group of adolescent Japanese bikers, whose high-powered machines allow them to patrol the streets of what is called Neo-Tokyo at incredible speeds. Those streets are hardly quiet following the world war that was triggered by a mysterious blast that, 31 years before, had totaled old Tokyo. Not only do our protagonists battle other biker gangs, but government forces fight angry protesters, corrupt political leaders vie with a military threatening to seize power and everything is affected somehow by paranormal forces involving a mysterious entity known only as Akira.
We follow the gang leader Kaneda, whose bike is a hyped-up machine that’s redder than a bottle of Heinz ketchup. He is the protector of his younger friend Tetsuo. But it is Tetsuo who, while chasing the rival Clown band of bikers, crashes into a strange, aged-looking figure. And that sets in motion the film’s path toward its eventual conclusion.
Along the way, we watch as Col. Shikishima – the head of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces – both oversees the scientists trying to figure out the secrets that empower Akira and fends off the efforts of the government leaders to limit his actions. Meanwhile, Kaneda and the rest of his gang try to find Testsuo, whom they last saw being taken to what they were told was a hospital.
That is, of course, a lie – something that eventually becomes clear as the film gradually reveals the secret behind Akira and the potential for, again, total destruction. Ōtomo presents all this in a frenzied blend of colors, quick-cut images of shapes and figures that evolve and devolve in a fever dream of sub-plots that, though arguably half-baked, still make a salient point.
Though far more complex than Godzilla, Akira is still part of Japan’s never-ending way of processing the echoes of the trauma it endured in 1945.