Hi there! It’s been awhile. Apologies for the delay! Uni has been my top priority these days, but I still love sharing resources on this blog. Hopefully I’ll have more time this year to share findings as I discover them.
Anyway, thought I would jump back in with a new find that I discovered from the Archival site known as The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), which is a fantastic source for paper, digital, software, and film resources, many of which would be lost to time without the site.
This specific Pamphlet that I’m sharing here seems to be from 1987-88, and contains a multitude of information about the film, including the voice cast, production staff, characters, story, and a section about Katsuhiro Otomo himself. Unfortunately, I can’t translate the text for you all, but it’s still a fantastic source that I would recommend checking out, especially if you’re interested in the promotional material produced for the film as it was being released.
Here is an embed of the PDF from Archive.org (Uploaded by user Mittermayer on June 2, 2020). It is also available for download in multiple formats on the website if you are interested!
I thought I’d share this on my blog with you all because of how commonly AKIRA is cited at being animated solely on 1s (or 24fps). This video by APLattanzi is very informative and I highly recommend you watch the entire thing! This is something that I didn’t realize and I’m an animation student, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t know this either 🙂
the TL;DW for this video is essentially that Akira utilizes different timing and spacing throughout its runtime, with most shots that are animated on 1s being action sequences such as the biking scenes. Other shots of less importance (or action) are animated on 2s (12fps) and 3s (8fps). A full action can be animated using a combination of any frame rate, it just depends on what the animator is trying to convey using their timing and spacing.
Katsuhiro Otomo was born in April 1954 in the Miyagi Prefecture of Japan. Growing up, Otomo was inspired to create comics from several different works. one of Otomo’s first experiences with comics was Shotaro Ishimori’s book how to be a comic artist, and he was also inspired by American movies including Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Easy Rider. After he graduated from High School, Otomo went straight into making comics, working for a weekly comics magazine called Action. In this publication, his first comic, an adaptation of Prosper Merimee’s novel titled Mateo Falcone (renamed Jyu-Sei, published in 1973). Action Magazine continued to be the home for his short serialized comics for several years, all of which consisted of less than 50 pages.
“All the movies said to pack up and leave town. Basically, all the movies were about leaving home. …all the movies were about people who were fed up with their boring lives, so they wanted to go someplace else.
“I really wanted to leave home, too. I wondered if someplace out there wasn’t like the life I had. So I wanted to leave home. But just saying that you’re going to leave home won’t… well, its not like you’re going to be able to support yourself. So I started thinking, what can I do to make enough to eat? Comics? If I do draw comics, maybe I’ll be able to eat… That’s too optimistic, isn’t it?
“Back then, I was thinking, “Maybe I’ll be able to eat if I do comics.” But at the time, comics has an air of freedom about them. It wasn’t… in that era, you weren’t drawing something for entertainment, you were putting the life you were leading into comic form.”
By 1979, Otomo began work on longer and more serialized versions of his comics, including Fire Ball, an incomplete work about the relationship between an extremely powerful super computer and the humans who live under its control. His work on Fire Ball was influenced by Osamu Tetsuwan’s manga titled “the mighty atom” (otherwise known as Astroboy). In Otomo’s comic, the Computer bears the name ‘Atom’ as an homage to the influenced material.
Domu Front Cover
Otomo’s most well known work before Akira has to be Domu, which began its serialization in January 1980 to 1982. The story takes inspiration from Shotaro Ishimori’s manga, “Sarutobi Ecchan,” as the main characters of both stories share the same name. The comic Domu itself has several similar elements with Akira, including child psychics and themes of broken law enforcement and violence.
Leading up to this point, the majority of Otomo’s works had been short story collections rather than standalone stories. When the comic was finalized and published as an individual comic in 1983, it became a huge success and a best-seller in Japan. The comic later went on to win Japan’s Science Fiction Grand Prix Award later that same year.
Before starting work on Akira, his publisher at the time, Young Magazine, approached him with a request to make several Sci-Fi stories. After he had worked with them on a few, they asked if Otomo would be up to creating a longer serialization using the same genre. Otomo agreed, and started work on Akira.
Tetsujin 28-Go volume cover
In coming up with the idea of the comic, Otomo used his previous work as well as other themes to guide how he approached his most popular work. The clearest example of this would be how Otomo used elements of Mistuteru Yokoyama’s ‘Tetsujin 28-go’ (Gigantor). The story of Tetsujin 28 is about a secret weapon developed by the military which was created before the Pacific war and hidden away before being found again by the main character, a boy named Shotaro Kaneda. Both Akira and Kaneda are clear homages to the manga, Akira by being referred to as subject 28 and Kaneda for having the same name as the protagonist. The setting of the comic itself was based on an alternative version of Tokyo, specifically with the influence of post-WWII Japan. Multiple different works that inspired Otomo to create Akira were written in this era, including Astroboy and Tetsujin 28. Works such as these illustrated Japan’s complex relationship with wartime and weapons of mass destruction since the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I’ve said this often before, but one of my influences as I made Akira was Tetsujin 28-go. This was a manga series meant for kids, with numbers applied to the cast of characters, and I wanted to make an homage to this series. I also wanted to depict the later Showa period (postwar Japan), including preparations for the Olympics, rapid economic growth, and the student unrest of the 1960s. I wanted to recreate the assorted elements that built this era and craft an exciting story that would seem believable enough in reality.”
In an Interview with Dark Horse Comics for the English publication of Domu, Otomo was asked about his thoughts on world building. This is a snippet from the interview:
Still establishing shot from the anime
“Come to think of it, I suppose I enjoy places sweltering with humanity precisely because they lack artificiality. When I was working on the location of Akira, I often went to a Tokyo Bay warehouse. Its walls were badly cracked and there were old, rusty pipes sticking out all over the place — it was great! And Tokyo itself looks like a mess: inharmonious, completely devoid of artificiality. Next to traditional Japanese architecture, you might suddenly find a Spanish-style villa. Some people say it’s ugly, but I’m fascinated by such places…”
While Otomo was still working on the Akira manga, Kodansha, the publisher for the magazine he worked for (Young Magazine) asked him if he had put any thought into turning Akira into a feature film. They were interested because Otomo had started doing animation work by creating the character designs for Genma Taisen (Harmageddon). Otomo agreed, and began work as the film’s sole director and one of two screenwriters, as well as creating the storyboards for the anime singlehandedly. In working on the animated adaptation of the manga, Otomo had this to say:
“Well, first of all, I wasn’t thinking of… making the comic version straight into an animation. I thought of it as something completely different.
“It was different, but since there was source material, and I wrote it, my first thought was to make a separate world for the movie based on the comic.
“… I thought of it more as a visual work than as an animation. It was less about making the characters move… than about the edits and things you have in a live-action film. I wanted to do something more technical with the visuals.
“… It’s not really a character piece. Not a character piece? Well, not a hero piece, I mean. In a hero piece, he shows up and he looks cool and all that. In ‘Akira,’ there isn’t a hero like that.”
With the film being condensed into a two-hour movie from a 2,000 page manga, the anime and manga have to have very different stories. The original manga was not even completed before the release of the film, the manga wrapping up two years later in 1990.
Even still, Otomo’s obsession with detail remained in the creation of the anime, with the production staff using several unprecedented techniques to create the end product. Both the music and dialogue was prescored for the film- meaning that all the lines and sounds included in the film were created before the animation started. A synclavier was also used for other miscellaneous sounds, which is a synthesizer and audio manipulating device. Computer graphics were also implemented, which was used only in isolated scenes such as the Doctor observing Testuo’s power growth.
One of the most notable tools used in the production of the film was the use of the Quick Action Recorder. The quick action recorder allowed the animators to take pictures of individual frames (like a down-shooter) and replay the frames at 24fps (frames per second). This technique was extremely helpful in correction and timing for the film, giving the staff a way to observe their work before moving onto cells.
when the film was released on July 16, 1988 in japan, and was released in 1989 in English. the worldwide gross for the movie is estimated to be $80 million, with the budget estimated at $10 million. It became a huge success especially with western audiences, and led to multiple releases of the translated manga in english. Otomo was actually suprised to see the success of Akira overseas, as he never intended to create for an audience outside of japan. In an interview when Otomo was asked what he thought about what the appeal of his work from his overseas audience said, “The fact that the comic of ‘Akira’ and the film version were accepted overseas… might be because they share those images.” Many westerners at the time associated it with cyberpunk and alternative action films like “Blade Runner.”
As for after Akira, Otomo went on to work on multiple different animated films, the most recognizable titles being Memories (1995), Metropolis (2001), Steamboy (2004), and Short Peace (2013). Akira still is by far his most famous and beloved work, although he continues to create and influence the comic and animation industries.
in the 1993 interview released by Pioneer LDC for the DVD release of Akira, Otomo said this about his reputation and desire for the future:
“When they say that ‘Akira’ is the only phenomenal thing I’ve done, I don’t think that’s good for me. I want to move forward, to take it a step further. I want other people and other animators to keep working their hardest. And I want to challenge that world… Challenge that wide-open field.”
Storyboard keyframes from the Akira Storyboard Collection (source)
note: These images can’t be found on the Blu-Ray disk under the name Akira Storyboard Collection- my best guess is that these images are from the book The Continuity of Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, which from what I’ve gathered is the physical copy of those storyboards that had a limited publication and was never translated from Japanese.
AKIRA MECHANIX 2019: Cyber Art & Mechanism From Moving Picture “Akira”, or simply AKIRA MECHANIX 2019 is an art book published by Bandai in 1988 consisting of 128 pages of artwork and technical development specifically for the various machinery in the anime. Essentially, this art book demonstrates the possible real-world implementation of the equipment, from bikes to guns to helicopters.
At first release in 1988, the book was ÂĄ1500, or about $13.50 US dollars. Today, since the book is out of circulation and was never published in English, the book has been priced by reselling platforms like eBay for more than $200 US dollars. (source)
Unfortunately, the full PDF for this publication either does not exist or is extremely difficult to find. I have complied 25 of the pages that I have been able to find in good quality into a sharable PDF which I will link here for anyone to download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zHn6eq7COMU-2tfRvNDdtLZnCAMfZlAK/view?usp=sharing
If you are still curious as to what the entire contents of this book are, there is a look-through video on YouTube available here:
Akira Animation Archives was a book released on December 26, 2002 from Kodansha Publishing. During its limited Japanese only release, it was ÂĄ2800, or about $25 US dollars. Since the book is out of print, reselling services like eBay have the book priced upwards of $180 US dollars.
Unfortunately, PDFs of the book are not available in full since this book is not easily found. I was able to compile multiple higher resolution pages, but only 15 out of 194. Here is the sharable link to download the available fragment of the book: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dzd_lnDLtZDDY8ZqIFWbs9OesZn43wdh/view?usp=sharing
If you would like to learn more about the contents of the book itself, check out the original source of some of the images in this PDF.
Akira’s incredible soundtrack is to be credited to the Geinoh Yamashirogumi music collective. The collective consists of more than 50 people but is most recognized by their composer, Tsutomu ĹŚhashi, also known as Shoji Yamashiro. Yamashiro was asked by Katsuhiro Otomo to score for the movie. Surprisingly, the music was actually created before the movie began its animation production. In other words, instead of adding music to a scene in post, animators used the music to influence the scene. In Otomo’s request of Yamashiro, he only asked to center the score around two ideas: “requiem” and “festival,” one of these songs went on later to even be titled Requiem.
Otomo originally found and sought out Yamashiro after listening to an album of his called Ecophony Rinne (released in 1986) which utilizes a combination of world music with digital mastering. This influence is definitely apparent when listening to the two albums together, as the Akira soundtrack uses multiple different non-electronic instruments and sounds to make a dystopian yet electronic feeling to Neo-Tokyo.
In a 1988 interview with Yamashiro, he described his work as “totally self-complacent music that I wanted to hear, other people be damned” and his work has inspired people up through the present day.
Exploring Akira 