Akira

Summary

Tokyo, as we know it, was destroyed by a kind of a new super-bomb of unknown origin. 9 hours after, World War III broke out and most of the major cities in the world were completely destroyed. 31 years after, Neo-Tokyo now stands, were the old Tokyo has been. One night, Kaneda and his motorcycle gang have an accident with a little boy with a wrinkled face, as one of an old man. Tetsuo, one of the gang's members crashes into the boy, who mysteriously remains unhurt and then simply vanishes from the eye. Tetsuo is brought to Hospital, and everything seems to have normalized. But that is not at all the case:
The strange boy from the last night was a part of a secret military project dealing with supernatural powers. The project is lead by the "Colonel", who wants to develop human weapons with aid of these powers. On his trail are Ryu and Kei (not Kay), members of a semi-terroristic group, who want to discover and destroy his plans. And now Tetsuo is going to be a new member of the project. But his powers rise much faster than the Colonel has expected. Tetsuo manages to find out the location of an underground freeze chamber, where the mysterium AKIRA is kept. Akira, too was a member of the project. But why did they put him in the freeze chamber at 0,0005 Kelvin ? They were afraid of something. Something they couldn't control anymore. Something Tetsuo is going to set free really soon. . .
And in midst of all the trouble: Kaneda and Kei

Character Guide

Tetsuo
Tetsuo is one of the more interesting characters of Akira. After he receives his new powers, he begins to lash out at his best friend, Kaneda. Deep within Tetsuo he harbors jealousy and resentment to the fact that throughout his life he has always been weak and needed Kaneda's help to defend him.

In a twisted way, this is Tetsuo's revenge for all the times Kaneda has helped Tetsuo.



Kaneda
Kaneda is your normal teenager. His hobby is riding on his motorcycle with his friends, as well. Kaneda becomes frustrated, however, when he realizes Tetsuo has become stronger than him. Not only that, but Tetsuo has killed on of their fellow friends. After this, Kaneda vows revenge against Tetsuo, and throughout the movie attempts to put an end to Tetsuo's madness, but proves to be no match to Tetsuo's newly harnessed psychic and physical strengths.



Kei
Kei is a member of one of the Antigovernment organizations. Kaneda meets her while at a riot and becomes somewhat infatuated with her. He follows her around continuously and eventually becomes caught up in the Antigovernment movement.

Kei is eventually used by one of the experimental treatment to guide Kaneda to Tetsuo so that they can stop him from reaching Akira's level of power, however, this fails.



Colonel
The Colonel is another interesting character. We can see from the beginning that his career is pretty bumpy and his methods for dealing with problems are being put into question by the Supreme Executives of Tokyo; the only ones who threaten his power. He may seem like the bad guy at first, but he is simply overwhelmed at all that he must do.

Eventually the Colonel rebels, in a way, against the Supreme Executives, arresting them all for treason. He is also responsible for Akira and Tetsuo, since he did not pressure the scientist's enough.



Akira
Although the title of the movie is named after Akira, he only appears once in the entire movie in the form of a transparent human and skeleton. Akira's power is eventually reached by Tetsuo, and when this happens Akira's "samples" are broken, which unleash him. He meets the experimental children as well as Tetsuo in the end of the movie, and when Tetsuo becomes a sort of "negative energy" he goes with Akira.

Another important thing to note is that in one of the flashbacks we see that both Akira and Tetsuo went to the same Kindergarten.