Filling in those filmic blind spots,
one person at a time
#7 EDITH BOWMAN ON AKIRA
THE FIRST-
TAKE CLUB
THE RULES OF the First-Take Club
are incredibly simple. Each month, we ask
someone to peruse our list of the 500 Greatest
Movies Of All Time (published in 2013) and
select a ilm they haven’t seen before. Then
they watch the ilm and tell us a) why the devil
it took them so long and b) what the devil they
think about it. This month’s inductee into the
club is broadcaster, DJ and author Edith
Bowman, whose movie-based soundtracks
podcast, Soundtracking, is a must-listen.
And Edith’s choice? The ilm that she hadn’t
seen, to her eternal shame? It’s number 440 on
our list, widely considered the greatest anime
of all time — Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s 1988 classic,
Akira. Over to you, Edith.I’ll admit I’m not any kind of expert on Japanese
animation. The closest I get to it is my eight-
year-old’s obsession with Pokémon, which I’m
well aware began life as a game for Game Boy.
So, Akira had passed me by until now. I’m glad
I’ve seen it — it’s a different league of animation
altogether. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I won’t recount the plot details here. Largely
because it would take me a very long time, as the
story is incredibly complicated. Short version:
Tetsuo Shima is a psychic who runs with a biker
gang in a dystopian futuristic Tokyo (or not that
futuristic — the story is set three years from now).
It’s directed by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, who adapted
his original manga series, which had over 2,000
pages of artwork. No wonder it took him eight