Yeah! How wild would it have been to see it in 1988 when it was released? I can't even imagine. I saw it in 1993 when it made its way to American VHS. Really t

Yeah! How wild would it have been to see it in 1988 when it was released? I can't even imagine. I saw it in 1993 when it made its way to American VHS. Really the main mindblowing thing to me was the level of execution w.r.t. the designs and the animation itself. When you look at the credits for Akira, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly every animation studio in Japan contributed to it, at more-or-less the crest of the Japanese "bubble economy" when the country was flowing with loads of capital. I remember pausing a bunch of scenes and just gawking at them frame by frame. It was wild to see all of that, in a 2hr animated movie, aimed at adults. It was infuriating as well, because the American animation industry was turning out almost exclusively kids' garbage in the decades leading up to 1993. I felt like our country was really wasting the medium. Although, happily, I think we really turned it around. Pixar lead the way IMO.