Akira - More Than Just A Bomb.

On the 7th of October 2023, Israel began a war campaign against the Palestinian population of Gaza with an estimated 50 000 casualties to date, of which more than 30 000 of them have been women and children. The Israeli leadership began the “war” on the pretense that Hamas terrorists had kidnapped and killed Israeli citizens. It’s a fact that’s does hold some weight, but the astonishment has been completely dispositional to the crime A little known fact to most of the world at the time was that Netanyayu’s popularity has been waning for a while. Him aligning with extreme right-wing politicians had failed to capture the support of the locals so with the knowledge of an impending Hamas attack he took advantage of the situation and let the attack happen making way for the war. War was used to preserve his leadership by giving Israel an enemy to band against and to distract from ailing leadership, it is a tactic no different from the Japanese government in Otomo’s titanic anime Akira (1988).

In a post Akira world, it is easy for the iconography of the film to get lost in the sea of the science fiction landscape. Be it in Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” Cartoon Network’s “The Regular Show” or the 2002 Clone Wars, it’s fingerprints can be seen everywhere if one knows where to look but one tends to overlook just how relevant its political commentary is. The Japanese government were experimenting on Akira, a child that possessed remarkable telekinetic and telepathic powers, when it went wrong and unintentionally caused an explosion that destroyed most of Tokyo. The government still keen on holding a monopoly on the power, that Akira possessed, opted to blame other countries claiming it to be a nuclear attack thus triggering a third world war, instead of confessing that the explosion was a direct result of their own hubris. War served as a distraction from the real issue of misguided government practices. The explosion mirroring America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Blood was used to absolve the sins of the elite. 

Medical experimentation is nothing new to Japan. The backstory of Akira parallels the history of Unit 731, a medical site where Japan’s imperial government sanction foreigners research of biological weapons on POW's, foreigners and poor people, with both fictional and real-life governments were keen to cover their tracks when government policy in and around the projects eventually made it impossible to deny to the masses. As the plot develops, we are introduced to Testuo, a street kid and a biker gang member who awakens his powers who starts his own journey of domination fueled by ego and hubris. He encounters a general who heads the Akira project and tries to control and study him. The governmental institutions that on paper swear to uphold the interest of all their citizens are found to be only paying attention to the forgotten members of society when it serves their own personal interests.  The government exploits its people, the adults exploit the children, the elites exploit their subjects. The reality is the same be it on the silver screen or the newspaper pages. 

In Akira, the government the remnants of Akira (the boy) were hidden under the stadium intended to be used as the venue for the Olympics, no doubt a reference to Japan’s attempt to whitewash their image after their failed white flag operation in Manchuria, China in 1932 and their subsequent exit from the league of nations (a precursor to The United Nations). Similar examples can be seen with the most recent World Cups in Qatar or Russia, with each respective country having a less-than-perfect history of human rights violations. Bread and Circles have been an ancient but effective means to distract and boost approval ratings. Goerge Bush’s approval rating post 9/11 and Israel’s “Bring Back the Hostages” campaign at the latest Super Bowl can attest to that. No matter how much the powers attempt to misdirect us, the opening crater shot in Akira always serves as a reminder to the audience that history is not something easily forgotten, especially not by its victims. 

Akira is arguably the most famous text of Hibakusha (those who survived the bomb) literature. It is as scathing a critique of unchecked power by individuals as it is about power structures that have only themselves to be accountable to. Otomo reminds us that an amoeba with the powers of a god will still be an amoeba but with the powers of a god, we are all worse off because of it as recent history illustrates.