akira
so i watched akira in my anime class in our movie theateresk viewing room. after hating it the first time i watched it freshman year, i was absolutely stunned by it on this viewing. reasons: 1) i was dumber then than i am now (though who knows by how much) 2) i watched it dubbed 3) the sound and picture quality on the tv in the lounge in which i viewed it did not do the film justice (the soundtrack is simply phenomenal). anyways, i just spent the last hour or so answering an online discussion question as to why/how Akira presents destruction so beautifully. i feel like posting my response despite its dryness because it crystallizes one theme of metamorphoses in my work over the last year or so. its refreshing to see a modern scifi film that so effectively takes up a classical theme in such an invigorating way. anyways, i dont really know why im posting this. i think its mostly so i dont forget this little blurb in the abudance of writing i do these days. though in all likelihood i will look back on it with shame as i do with much of my past works, both creative and analytical.
In my opinion, destruction in Akira transfixes the viewer for two related but distinct reasons. First, Akira's presentation is simply stunning. The animation flows as fluidly as any I have ever seen before. The art breathes real texture into its surrealist figures and motion. The cinematography (if it even makes sense to call it that) also jars the viewer with effective uses of slow motion, canted angles, and other tricks of disorientation in order to defamiliarize and probe destruction. In conjunction with anxious music and disturbing imagery and plot, Akira's portrayal of destruction captures the viewer because of its elegant and innovative formal presentation. The great irony is that Akira presents destruction in a highly ordered way.
But destruction figures in another dimension because it functions as a major theme and motif of Akira. Therefore, any manifestation of destruction also entrances the viewer by the merits of its metaphorical relevance. Akira, like a handful of Western epics such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid (Akira is an epic for it tells a story of national heritage and identity), stresses the essentiality of destruction (or chaos) in the process of creation and/or reconstruction. Destruction serves the purpose of destabilizing formal structures so that agents can revise them. Oftentimes, Akira's destruction hightlights the component parts of hitherto undissected bodies via deconstruction, deformation, and distortion; in doing so, it urges the acknowledgment of both the precariousness and partial arbitrariness of any extant form. Thus, destruction becomes a way of revisioning objects in a way that is simply impossible in the realm of the stable. In this sense, destruction or, at the very least, imaginative destruction--or the envisionment and expression of alternate forms via the imagined deconstruction or revision of extant, previously extant, or hypothetical forms--is the vehicle for change, because change cannot occur except via an at least partial destruction and subsequent reassemblage of the progenitive form. It is important to acknowledge that Akira operates only on the level of imaginative destruction as Akira presents only an imagined diegesis.
Thematically speaking, the abundance of destruction in Akira should be seen as a way of encouraging critical thought about the nature of extant forms and their formal security (or lack there of) rather than a spectacle. Thus, the excitement elicited by Akira's destruction should not be seen as a revelment in actual chaos and destruction but as a serious study of its role in the inevitable process of change (whether it be aesthetic, political, psychological, technological--basically any change of the social order).
In my opinion, destruction in Akira transfixes the viewer for two related but distinct reasons. First, Akira's presentation is simply stunning. The animation flows as fluidly as any I have ever seen before. The art breathes real texture into its surrealist figures and motion. The cinematography (if it even makes sense to call it that) also jars the viewer with effective uses of slow motion, canted angles, and other tricks of disorientation in order to defamiliarize and probe destruction. In conjunction with anxious music and disturbing imagery and plot, Akira's portrayal of destruction captures the viewer because of its elegant and innovative formal presentation. The great irony is that Akira presents destruction in a highly ordered way.
But destruction figures in another dimension because it functions as a major theme and motif of Akira. Therefore, any manifestation of destruction also entrances the viewer by the merits of its metaphorical relevance. Akira, like a handful of Western epics such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid (Akira is an epic for it tells a story of national heritage and identity), stresses the essentiality of destruction (or chaos) in the process of creation and/or reconstruction. Destruction serves the purpose of destabilizing formal structures so that agents can revise them. Oftentimes, Akira's destruction hightlights the component parts of hitherto undissected bodies via deconstruction, deformation, and distortion; in doing so, it urges the acknowledgment of both the precariousness and partial arbitrariness of any extant form. Thus, destruction becomes a way of revisioning objects in a way that is simply impossible in the realm of the stable. In this sense, destruction or, at the very least, imaginative destruction--or the envisionment and expression of alternate forms via the imagined deconstruction or revision of extant, previously extant, or hypothetical forms--is the vehicle for change, because change cannot occur except via an at least partial destruction and subsequent reassemblage of the progenitive form. It is important to acknowledge that Akira operates only on the level of imaginative destruction as Akira presents only an imagined diegesis.
Thematically speaking, the abundance of destruction in Akira should be seen as a way of encouraging critical thought about the nature of extant forms and their formal security (or lack there of) rather than a spectacle. Thus, the excitement elicited by Akira's destruction should not be seen as a revelment in actual chaos and destruction but as a serious study of its role in the inevitable process of change (whether it be aesthetic, political, psychological, technological--basically any change of the social order).