Akira and wonderful CASH MONEY (and more Akira)

So, yesterday I started watching Akira for the first time. I’m 18, mind you, and I’m a total geek, so most of my friends are surprised I havn’t seen it before.

Now, I’m actually watching it at the moment. Tetsuo just went apeshit through the playground and Kay just sorta faded away and pulled a Jesus with the midget kid. Kaneda’s being a useless dick trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But one of the first things I have to say about this whole damn thing is that it’s FUN! Hot damn! There’s explosions EVERYWHERE! Gore and blood and bullets permeate this film! This is an absolutely insane movie! I should have expected something this fun from the guy that pulled Steamboy, but god damn, this is awesome!

Making the day better is my Papa. The good man has seen it within his discretion to send me FIVEHUNDRED DOLLARS for my graduation! !!! I never really liked the guy, but hell if I don’t now! Five hundred bucks! Man, that doubles what I’ve got in my account now! GTA4, here I come!

Edit: I just watched the whole movie. Holy Crap, that was crazy. The ending reminds me of the second half of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddessy. Holy Jeez.

Edit Edit: In fact, the whole damn thing reminds me of Space Oddessy. It starts off in a bleak and uninteresting future world with technology far rivaling today’s, it centers around wierdass symbolism (Monolith, Akira), and I can’t make heads or tails of the second half of both movies which both entail one of the main characters morphing into a giant baby. I dunno what to make of it. Most people call it a “classic”, and the fact that it pretty much brought Anime to the west is pretty undeniable, but I can still imagine the first people to ever see this movie grinning in amazement at the detail to artwork and the amazing voicework, having been previously, exclusively exposed to the more lacking American cartoons… and then cringing with despair and confusion at the explanation for Tetsuo’s powers, the shrivelled midgets (one of which looks like a cross between the Kingpin and the fat kid from The Goonies), and the last 15 minutes of the film. I came off with a warm afterglow, I’ll admit, but I’m still trying to figure it out.