Every once in a while someone uploads another copy of Akira to youtube. The latest one, from last week, looks good (Japanese audio with optional subtitles) but it’s missing the last 30 seconds – which is kind of missing the whole point of the movie. But this led me to check how many Akira uploads I could easily find from previous posts here and on [email protected]
- Japanese audio, hardcoded subtitles 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8zOYkc-GI
- Japanese audio, optional subtitles missing last 30 seconds, subtitles are a little weird 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqvkeskcy9g
- English dub with optional (ASR generated?) subtitles 2160p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qujRfw4usC8
- English dub 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSBpzX8_hfo
- English dub 720p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmjsXZjUqyM
Personally I think the first is the best. Weirdly, they all seem to be blocked in Germany and Austria. However, every previous upload I checked was still there. Not sure what that says, but as you probably know, it’s an excellent film.
Akira (Japanese: アキラ) is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film[4] directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo’s 1982 manga Akira. Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires incredible telekinetic abilities after a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo.
I’d go one step further and say Akira’s one of the few movies worth buying on physical media.