If there were ever an Easter egg that deserved the slow clap treatment, this one from the seminal classic Akira does. It’s a masterwork. It’s so good, in fact, that it wasn’t even discovered until a couple of days ago by a Japanese Twitter user.
AKIRAの25号予言シーンに作画スタッフの悲痛な叫びが隠されていました（いま知った pic.twitter.com/ScogXd89oN
— ひこざ (@HikozaTwi) December 24, 2021
For those of you who don’t read Japanese and have no idea what the big joke is, allow me to explain. What the Twitter user is pointing out is a piece of English attached to a box during the scene for the prediction from the 25th ESPer. At first glance, this would appear to be random gibberish since it’s written in English and doesn’t appear to be forming any actual words.
However, if you translate that English to Japanese you get the following sentences:
DO SHITE
CONNA TO COM
ADEKA KA NA
KIYANAN NAI
NO!
IKAGEN NI
SEAY! MOU
I know that still means nothing to many of you, and you’re still wondering what the big deal is. The magic comes from translating those Japanese sentences back into English, at which point you get this:
Why
do I
have to even
draw this
part!
Give me a
break! Geez
That’s right. In the middle of a dramatic scene within Akira, one animator vented his frustrations at being forced to draw something boring and that, my friends, is what you call the ultimate revenge. As I mentioned in the beginning, it’s likely that this message was never meant to be found (much like the funny corridor signs in Star Trek: The Next Generation) as no one at the time likely expected this movie to still be around and getting views on high-quality monitors and television sets many years in the future.
While it’s unknown which animator was responsible for this particular Easter egg, I’d like to take a moment to salute that nameless animator who struck a blow against tedious and repetitive work by leaving their own mark within the industry.
Source: SoraNews24
