Twenty-five years ago, Katsuhiro Otomo’s anime Akira broke the mold for animated storytelling. Phil Hoad pays tribute:
Anime (and its print sibling, manga) arrived in the west at the right time; its thrilling sense of spatial possibilities and destructive glee showed up Disney’s sentimental, character-focused approach and conservatism, as the American company slipped into its mid-90s slump. …
Led by Akira, anime expanded the idea of what animation could be: violent, abrasive, radically stylised, thoughtful and above all, adult. It arguably readjusted expectations ahead of the later revitalisation and maturation of the industry under Pixar – sweeping away the prejudice that anything with drawings was for kids. Along with a host of other cult and alternative influences percolating into the mainstream, its presence was widely felt by the late 1990s, from the west’s embrace of Pokémon fever, to tabloid moral panics, to the obvious visual transfusion received by The Matrix – which became the key touchstone for the next decade of Hollywood actioners. The Wachowskis put their debt on the record with their spin-off The Animatrix in 2003, just as Quentin Tarantino did with The Origin of O-Ren, the cartoon segment of Kill Bill Volume I.
The Dish 