Animation At Feature Film Discipline

Japanese television animation had spent two decades economising: limited frame rates, held cels, mouths that move in three positions. Akira was made to the opposite specification. Around a hundred and sixty thousand cels, a palette extended with colours mixed for the film, backgrounds detailed enough to hold a close up, and prelay dialogue recorded before animation so that lip movement matches actual speech, which almost nothing in Japanese animation did at the time. The story compresses a manga Otomo had not finished writing into two hours: a motorcycle gang, a military psychic programme, and a friend whose power grows faster than his ability to hold a body together. Neo Tokyo is drawn as a city with functioning infrastructure, which is why the destruction registers.