This article is authorized to be reproduced from "Not Scattered"
The COVID-19 pandemic has trapped many people at home. The recent spread of pneumonia around the world is not optimistic. At present, in addition to China, the number of confirmed cases in South Korea and Japan is rising, which makes people worry about whether this year's Tokyo Olympic Games can still be carried out as scheduled.
The Japanese animation masterpiece introduced today predicted 32 years ago that the 2020 Olympic Games would be held in Tokyo and eventually suspended due to force majeure.
Akira (1988)
Director: Katsuyo Otomo
Writers: Katsuyo Otomo / Hashimoto Izo
Starring: Mitsuo Iwata / Nozomu Sasaki / Mami Koyama / Tetsuaki Genda / Hiroshi Otake / Koichi Kitamura / Tsuhiro Ikemizu
Genre: Action / Sci-fi / Animation
Country/Region of Production: Japan
Date: 1988-07-16 (Japan)
Runtime: 124 min
Also known as: Akira the Warrior of Light / Yakira / Yakira / アキラ
Douban: 8.5 points
Akira is a god prophecy.
This movie is Katsuyo Otomo's debut, from the timeline, "Akira", which was released in Japan on July 16, 1988, first hit the Olympic Games and will be held again in Tokyo, in fact, there is a small difference here, that is, the Tokyo Olympic Games in the film is the 30th, and the Tokyo Olympic Games that will be held this year are actually the 32nd.
However, the background time in the film is very close to reality, the "old Tokyo" in "Akira" was blown up in July 1988, and 31 years later, in 2019, humans rebuilt a dark and rotten "new Tokyo" on Tokyo Bay.
An important detail in the film is the countdown board for the Tokyo Olympics.
There are two words in the lower right corner, "suspension", which means that the Tokyo Olympics were announced on this day.
The above line reads "開迄あと147th", which means that the news of "canceling the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games" was published 147 days after the original time.
So what day is it after the backwards?
The Tokyo Olympics in the real world will hold the opening ceremony on July 24, 2020, according to which 147 days forward, exactly February 29, tomorrow!
And we know the peculiarities of this year... In particular, the spread of the new coronavirus in Japan and South Korea has been very rampant in recent days, and in this situation, if the spread of the virus is not controlled, the Tokyo Olympics will be really cold...
Of course, it is not necessary to cancel the Olympic Games with the epidemic, such as the Seka virus before the opening of the last Rio Olympic Games, but the Olympic Games are still held as scheduled.
At present, Japan's Olympic torch relay is still being held normally, and senior members of the International Olympic Committee recently said that if the epidemic cannot be effectively controlled in late May, the Tokyo Olympics may really be cancelled.
But the prophecy is reversed, and we still hope that both Japan and China can control the epidemic and do not let ordinary people suffer health and property damage.
This work, which is full of apocalypse, social collapse and the carnival of shady forces, made "1988" the most important year in the history of Japanese animation and even in the history of world animation.
In 1988, what cartoons came out, including Miyazaki's "Totoro" and Takahata's "Grave of the Fireflies".
I wept and dried my tears for these two anime, but the melancholy they narrated eventually tended to soften, and in contrast, Katsuyo Otomo envisioned an imaginary future in an even more terrifying and crazy form, and that future was in ruins.
The artistic style of Akira has nourished many excellent science fiction films, although it is a fictional world and an end, but it is equipped with eternal human dilemmas.
It is impossible to talk about this film without mentioning the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan.
On August 6, 1945, a nuclear bomb attacked Hiroshima, Japan, killing 40,000 people on the spot. Three days later, the second nuclear bomb landed on Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the years that followed.
Many of Japan's post-war films cannot escape the negativity of this national trauma, just as godzilla represents a series of monster films, skepticism about science, criticism of the military, distrust of the government... These themes can also be found in Akira.
In addition, life in Tokyo in the 1970s undoubtedly inspired Katsuyo Otomo, with student marches, political movements, homeless youth, hooligans everywhere...
He projects these elements on Akira's "New Tokyo", the disgruntled youth, the corrupt government, the rampant religious fanaticism, the tearing caused by nuclear fear, the fascination with destruction and rebirth... Hardly any gray areas are missing.
The opening of Akira is very powerful, a white light suddenly appears, and a huge explosion engulfs the entire city in an instant, leaving only a dry black crater.
For more than three decades, the new Tokyo has risen from the rubble, more high-tech and decayed, and the towering height of the buildings has exposed the lust of black oppression.
The protagonists of "Akira" are two "abandoned children", Kaneda and Tetsuo, who live in an orphanage and replace the missing blood relationship with brotherhood.
Kaneda is reckless and proud and loves to be in the limelight, while Tetsuo is somewhat weak and stingy, admiring and relying on Kaneda, but also hating Kaneda's elder brotherly protection, which gradually becomes a kind of suppression and humiliation as Tetsuo becomes an adult.
When they grow up, they become motorcycle thugs and troubled youth in new Tokyo, and the school in "Akira" is a problem juvenile shelter, which shows the dilapidation of this "new Tokyo".
In "New Tokyo," children can only choose between "abandoned" and "used."
The military has been secretly conducting a scientific study called Akira, which is a live experiment using the brains of young children, and they want to stimulate their intelligence to turn them into super-psychic children.
Here is a child called "Akira", who is the most successful experiment, representing the absolute energy that exists in all things.
The children who are experimented still innocent, but the skin of their faces has prematurely deteriorated, and they are like a mixture of corpses and aliens, mad scientists and the military, who want to listen to miracles in their mouths despite the ethical bottom line.
Kaneda owns a cool red motorcycle and a red jacket with a "capsule" motif, which is the precursor to bloody battles and a symbol of strength, just as Tetsuo later possessed unrivaled strength and a red cloak.
Tie Xiong encounters a psychic child in a chase, and then his fears continue to appear, and the memories that haunt him are like nightmares that choke Tie Xiong's throat.
While fending off the illusion of fear, his superpowers also increased, and the clearer the nightmare, the more vulnerable he became, and the more he relied on this unknown power.
Unfortunately, he didn't know anything about his destructive power, and perhaps Tetsuo just wanted to prove to Kaneda and the others that he didn't need anyone's salvation and mercy, so he gladly embraced the devil's gift and became its host.
This force transformed Tetsuo into the new savior of religious fanatical groups. This extremist group believes in the divine power of "Akira", calling Akira the god of light and wanting to incite public opinion to overthrow the corrupt government.
But this rabble-rouser group will only make Tokyo more dilapidated, they are chaotic speculators with no conscience.
Tetsuo's loss is predestined, and his dependence on superpowers also leads to the collapse of his self-consciousness, and his flesh begins to swell and mutate, completely becoming a catalyst for summoning the destructive power of Akira.
Tetsuo's character is actually a carefully designed "container of humanity" by Katsuyo Otomo, who is used to project absurd acts that try to control everything.
Kaneda also meets a girl named "K," a member of a revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing a corrupt bureaucracy, but this is also a ruse, because the leader of this revolutionary group is actually a member of a corrupt government.
So far, all the teenagers we see have been destroyed by this world.
Children with superhuman intelligence are used for experimentation, abandoned children take to the streets to become bullies, weak children are seduced and used by superpowers, children who dare to rebel are misdirected and end up serving this rotten system.
Therefore, the cause of the destruction of "New Tokyo" is very clear, it is to destroy the future by destroying the next generation.
When the "New Tokyo" government sacrificed these children in the name of maintaining stability, it has already shown a complete collapse, and what this "New Tokyo" wants to protect is the throne of the authorities or the future of the children?
Also worth mentioning in Akira is the "Colonel", a high-ranking government official who knows and participates in the implementation of the "Akira" plan, and although he appears as a villain, he is not as tyrannical as we think.
He was a military man, and protecting the stability and future of "New Tokyo" was a higher obligation to him than life, and unlike the corrupt and greasy authorities, all his actions were not for his own gain.
And so the paradox arose, and as a man who was truly concerned about the future of "New Tokyo," the Colonel was always on the side of the mighty.
And it is undeniable that his power was granted through a corrupt position in power, which he saw as a resignation and hoped that the "Akira" plan would eliminate the rebels who endangered the rule of "New Tokyo".
It's also a self-deluded hoax, a power game of weak, conceited adults, because in the end it was the "Akira" plan that brought about the destruction of "New Tokyo," not those hostile to the government.
This is also the reason why many people compare "Akira" to a "nuclear threat", when the various authorities hope for nuclear energy because of mutual fear, and finally the world is destroyed by nuclear energy.
In addition, the scientist in "Akira" is also very representative, and he will stop at nothing to satisfy his curiosity, even lying.
He himself is an evil man without reverence, is there such a person in the scientific field of our real world? Yes, please feel free to take a seat.
So at the end, I actually began to look forward to the end of the world, and hoped that the energy of "Akira" would be like a brush to turn the rotten world of "New Tokyo" back into a blank piece of paper.
But this is ultimately a fantasy, because the end of the world never brings the real end of the world, and it is always followed by endless trauma.
But from another perspective, trauma can puncture the numbness caused by laziness and arrogance from top to bottom, because every person who has experienced the catastrophe of the "end of the world" will be more vigilant than any peacetime human being against the bitter consequences of "evil".
The practical significance of "Akira" still exists today, and although the humanitarianism in Miyazaki's works has become the mainstream trend of animation art, there are actually a considerable number of fans who are extremely fond of the spicy and straightforward such as Katsuyo Otomo.
For example, "Cannon Street" (director) and "The Stinkiest Weapon" in "Memories Trilogy" (screenwriter), and "Farewell To the Weapon" (screenwriter) in "Short Peace" (short film collection) are the most straightforward satires on the current society.
It turns out that the reflection brought about by this animation should belong to all mankind, which is why this work is highly praised in both the East and the West. "Akira" is indeed a film worth watching repeatedly, in fact, more than that, Katsuyo Otomo's works are worth rewatching.
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