Description
Price: $16.71
(as of Apr 02, 2025 12:28:11 UTC – Details)
Neo-Tokyo is about to E X P L O D E!
Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 0.01 ounces
Audio Description: : English
Item model number : 28935078
Director : Katsuhiro Otomo
Media Format : Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, Animated, NTSC, Color, Widescreen
Run time : 2 hours and 4 minutes
Release date : November 12, 2013
Actors : Johnny Yong Bosch, Jan Rabson, Wendee Lee
Subtitles: : English
Language : English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Studio : Funimation Prod
ASIN : B00ENNA62W
Number of discs : 2
Jason –
Amazing anime!
The grandfather of cyber-punk!
S. Peyton –
The exact item advertised
It was a gift, so I don’t know if it plays okay or not. No comments were made about it yet.
Nelson Velis –
Classic.
A must have for any Blu-Ray Collection, fan of anime and/or manga or not!
Kurgan –
A Masterpiece – never looked and sounded better
I’ve seen this movie a couple of times before on DVD and seeing it finally in high definition I fell in love with it all over again. Yes, it’s a long, bizarre, dark and gritty vision of the (then) future. Yes, we are approaching the real 2020 Tokyo Olympics (a year late because of the pandemic), so let’s hope no teenagers blow up into giant blobs after trying to kill everybody. This cartoon is definitely not for kids, having quite a bit of blood, brutality and some nudity. This is a the mature blockbuster that shocked the Western world into the knowledge that Japanese Anime had come into its own.
The artwork is incredible (and the style has thankfully not been copied much, although fans of Dragonball Z will see clearly the inspiration their shows have taken), with fluid animation and lifelike, frightening images of destruction and illusion come to life. The troubled characters try to live within the bizarre nightmare world in which they are placed. The story follows a couple of young men caught up in a government scheme to bring about a psychic super-being: a human weapon that cannot be controlled, a warning about tampering with the mind and doomsday weaponry as well as the loss of innocence and cheapening of human life when overwhelmed by technology, greed and the lust for power. It’s a thrill ride that inspired many later on down the line besides Dragonball, but also the Matrix and Blade-Runner. Sci Fi fans will recognize inspiration taken from the Star Wars movies and Tron, and video game fans of the early 90’s will see images shown here (Turtles in Time for one). Next to the works of Studio Ghibli, this is probably the best example of big budget anime as mature entertainment one can find (mature as in ‘not just for kids’).
Package includes the DVD version as well as the Blu-ray, extras and you can listen to it with or without subtitles and have the choice of original Japanese language or two different English tracks (from the 80’s and a new one done in 2001). This is worth it for collectors of the genre not just fans of the movie.
Amazon Customer –
well protected
I love this movie, and this edition has a beautiful menu which I’ve found can be uncommon for an old anime that originally came to me when I was young via bootleg VHS digitally copied into an MP4 (I’m not old enough to have “been there” when Akira and Ghost in the Shell hit the States, however I do have my own nostalgia). However what’s important is that it arrived well packaged with zero scratches or dings to the case, and it is actually a NEW copy. No fingerprints or little white lies. This is really a factory new DVD and the shipper knows how to send a DVD safety through the mail system. Perfectly satisfied.
GE –
Finally the original Akira I love!!!
Akira has been one of my top 5 movies of all time for a while. I have watched it numerous times over the past 20 years. I first found out about it when I was reading a metal magazine and Dave Mustaine had an Akira t-shirt – I figured it must be cool, and since purchasing it on VHS I have loved it.
However, after I got a DVD player, I bought the DVD version and was completely disappointed. The English on the original version was dubbed, for sure, but it was done with style – the language and story, nuances and emotion, all represented the story and its depth. The new dubbing was amateur and seemed cheap, and definitely took away not only the story but bumped Akira down from being a favorite. Some examples include the use of profanity when it wasn’t necessary, and the use of various cliches which didn’t even relate to the story, plot, scene, or tone. I bought another one on Blu-ray, hoping it would be better, and it wasn’t.
But this one is it! It allows you to select the audio as the original 1988 english dubbing (not the default), which is something I have been hoping for for years. Decades even. Sad that it took this long, but better late than never.
The version I’m talking about it the one with Kaneda walking towards his bike from above, with “25th anniversary edition” above the Akira logo on the bottom, “Blu ray + dvd combo pack” on the top in the blue banner, and “Funimation” on the lower right hand corner of the title.
Finally… so happy I can share this with others now without being embarrassed about the terrible dubbing quality.
Mark A. Weiss –
Stunning Quality Restoration
My first viewing of this film was back in the early 90s, and it was a tenth generation VHS copy, passed from fan to fan via pen pals, the way we got anime way back when. I remember that copy was so full of sync loss and color bleed that it gave me a headache.
Seeing AKIRA on Blu-ray for the first time on my 12 foot projection screen was like experiencing the world of AKIRA for the very first time. The quality of image transfer to digital master was amazing for the age of the film. An excellent job of cleaning up, degraining each frame, was done.
The audio seemed quite good for a film of this era, too.
About the film itself, the animation work was groundbreaking for it’s era, and it holds up well against many of today’s anime in that respect. Lip sync was one of the unique breakthroughs in this film (I learned about this twenty years ago in a documentary called “Akira Production Report”. They recorded dialog first, and let the actors act naturally, then adjusted the animation via the Quick Action Recorder to match the speech with precision.
AKIRA depicts a distopian world, one I would not want to live in. But Since this is a 25 year anniversary edition, and a classic, I wanted to own a high quality copy. Every anime fan should own this.
I expected there to be more bonus material on this disc and was slightly disappointed that “Akira Production Report” was not on the bonus material section. It was an excellent overview of how the film was made.