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Is there some hidden meaning/message in
[Akira](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29)?

Does it have something to do with the scars left in the Japanese by the
bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And ultimately...

> is Akira the A-Bomb?

Or is there another deeper meaning than the one depicted in the movie?


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2012-12-12T19:15:34.103
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2012-12-25T01:43:37.123
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symbolism akira
Is there a meaning/message behind Akira?


The manga is far more informative than the movie. The movie seemed to adapt
the first two and the last volumes for its content, without really bothering
to explain anything about who characters were and where they came from.

The [manga](http://akira.wikia.com/wiki/Akira_%28Manga%29), begins with a
nuclear blast that destroy Tokyo and triggers World War III.

> It turns out that it wasn't a bomb, but Akira that caused the blast. Much of
> the plot of the first half of the manga concerns attempts by the military-
> industrial complex to contain the power of Akira. The central plot device
> involved an experiment to create weaponized "psychic" children through
> neuro-surgery and pharmaceutical regimens. Akira was an experiment gone
> dangerously awry and the child is now kept deep underground (under Neo-
> Tokyo's Olympic Stadium) within a sort of giant high-tech freezer.

I believe that there is a taboo on overtly discussing the bomb that speaks to
a mediation between repression and remembrance. The memory of a nuclear attack
on one's own nation is a bit too vivid of a tragedy for many to face directly.
The author makes very good use of allegories to present a nuclear holocaust
through a _shounen_ type of juvenile and imaginative storytelling. This way, a
Japanese reader might be able to be drawn into a subject that would otherwise
provoke repulsion, or at least unease and anxiety.


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2012-12-20T22:27:17.757
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The movie is symbolic of Tokyo in a post world war environment, which is
obvious from the first few minutes. Note, though, how it starts with a massive
nuclear explosion, forcing Japan to start over and rebuild. Over the next
thirty years, Tokyo becomes a hub of technological advancement, and a breeding
ground for new businesses and capitalist opportunities. In the process, the
people get more greedy, the gap between rich and poor becomes bigger, and the
government becomes full of self interest as opposed to service of the people.

The film is a kind of satirical way to look at Japan after the actual nuclear
explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's become a black hole, closing in on
itself with all the greed and selfishness from the moves forward Japan made
that were almost kind of forced on them because of the results of the Second
World War.


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