I’m not saying that you should go out to a movie theater in the United States during a worldwide pandemic just to see a classic anime movie. I’m just saying that if you absolutely MUST go out to a movie, it might as well be this one.
According to listings on the AMC and Regal theater chain websites, Funimation will host a special one-night event on Thursday, September 24th, where they will screen the subtitled version of the 4K remaster of the movie Akira. The remaster was originally released to 36 IMAX theaters in Japan on April 3rd, 2020.
Based on the manga of the same name created by Katsuhiro Otomo (who also directed the movie), the series originally ran in Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990 and was collected in six volumes. Originally it was released in English by Marvel under the Epic Comics label, making it one of the first manga to be fully translated into English. Most recently, the manga was released in a special anniversary collection by Kodansha USA in 2017. Kodansha describes the story as:
A dystopian saga set in Neo-Tokyo, a city recovering from thermonuclear attack where the streets have been ceded to motorcycle gangs and the rich and powerful run dangerous experiments on destructive, supernatural powers that they cannot control.
You cannot use enough words to describe how important the anime movie Akira was to Japanese pop culture in the late 80s and early 90s. A landmark movie, Akira was one of the first non-Ghibli movies to put anime on the map of many, many people (including myself). Over 30 years later, Akira is still celebrated as one of the best sci-fi films ever created, and for good reason.
A seminal classic, this truly can be considered a “bucket list” movie where you can’t say your life is complete if you haven’t watched it at least once.
Source: Anime News Network
