![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
...this anime was released in Japan:
...and thousands of science fiction fans the world over had their minds completely blown. It's so highly influential it didn't just reset the bar on anime production, it inspired thousands of other animes, films, and stories (and even a Kanye West video). I highly suggest watching the movie at least once if you haven't already. It can be a bit squicky at times (trust me--that guy getting shot in the trailer above is actually pretty tame compared to the climax), but if you watch it purely from a storytelling perspective, you'll marvel at the level of worldbuilding detail as well as the unconventional storytelling.
I mention this, as this movie was one of the inspirations for me to start writing science fiction and fantasy. I was never that big of a fan of the genre (or of anime, for that matter) until I saw a friend's copy in college around 1991. I was completely blown away not just by the level of animation, but also by how detailed and how far they could take a story. I'd also found a few collections of Japanese horror/SF short stories at the local library and ate them up because of this film. From there I'd start renting out other anime from Tower Records and still consider it one of my favorite types of animation. Much of it was primarily for the entertainment, but ultimately I would study these movies for their methods of storytelling as well.
Katsuhiro Otomo didn't direct that many anime films (Memories, Steamboy and segments of Neo-Tokyo and Robot Carnival), and he's done a few other manga series, including Domu: A Child's Dream, The Legend of Sister Sarah and the original AKIRA (the movie was based on what he had of it so far, so it's not exactly note-for-note but more of an extended and more psychological story), but all of them are definitely worth checking out.
...and thousands of science fiction fans the world over had their minds completely blown. It's so highly influential it didn't just reset the bar on anime production, it inspired thousands of other animes, films, and stories (and even a Kanye West video). I highly suggest watching the movie at least once if you haven't already. It can be a bit squicky at times (trust me--that guy getting shot in the trailer above is actually pretty tame compared to the climax), but if you watch it purely from a storytelling perspective, you'll marvel at the level of worldbuilding detail as well as the unconventional storytelling.
I mention this, as this movie was one of the inspirations for me to start writing science fiction and fantasy. I was never that big of a fan of the genre (or of anime, for that matter) until I saw a friend's copy in college around 1991. I was completely blown away not just by the level of animation, but also by how detailed and how far they could take a story. I'd also found a few collections of Japanese horror/SF short stories at the local library and ate them up because of this film. From there I'd start renting out other anime from Tower Records and still consider it one of my favorite types of animation. Much of it was primarily for the entertainment, but ultimately I would study these movies for their methods of storytelling as well.
Katsuhiro Otomo didn't direct that many anime films (Memories, Steamboy and segments of Neo-Tokyo and Robot Carnival), and he's done a few other manga series, including Domu: A Child's Dream, The Legend of Sister Sarah and the original AKIRA (the movie was based on what he had of it so far, so it's not exactly note-for-note but more of an extended and more psychological story), but all of them are definitely worth checking out.
