Pi in the Sky

Akira: Manga vs. Movie

Posted on August 24th, 2008 at 7:43pm by Pi.
Categories: Comics, Cinema.

I’ve just watched Akira again, just after having reread the manga after a long time. And as I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I’m going to write a small review of how well each version stands to the other.

First of all, this is the movie data sheet:
Akira

Anime. Japan, 1988

Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo

Writers: Katsuhiro Ôtomo (manga) & Izô Hashimoto

Cast: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama

Regarding the manga, it was created by Katsuhiro Ôtomo and published in serialized form between 1982 and 1990. And here it starts the list of atypical curiosities of Akira’s adaptation from manga to cinema. Because the movie was written, produced and released before Ôtomo finished the manga. Actually, when the movie script was written, Akira was only by its fourth volume. This explains the huge divergence of the plot between the movie and the manga.

Another atypical element of the adaptation was that both the script (with Hashimoto) and the direction were in charge of the own creator of the manga, Katsuhiro Ôtomo. Ôtomo had complete creative control of the project, driving it in the direction he thought appropiate. This control is very rare in the adaptation genre, maybe only comparable to Paul Auster, or maybe the adaptation of The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

Thus, Ôtomo having the absolute control, and the support of a big amount of companies (The Akira Comittee) to face the expenses and cinematographic challenge of the adaptation, why the movie and the manga are so different?

In this case, the explanation is simple: Akira is not a conventional adaptation. Ôtomo didn’t have clear how Akira was going to continue, and he didn’t know how it was going to finish. He had many doubts regarding this, and reading the manga sometimes it’s noticeable a general change of direction. So it’s not strange that the movie is so radically different compared to the manga, even when it keeps the spirit and the ambience.

However, both have many elements and subjects in common, sometimes clearly, and other times in very subtle ways. The manga is very visual, with barely any support text, and dialogues scarce most of the times. But many of the key scenes in the manga, even when they don’t appear as scenes in the movie, are present in apparently hidden details; but to be revealed clearly to any reader of the manga. To put two examples, in the manga there’s a container falling from a building when Neo-Tokyo is in ruins; in the beginning of the movie, Takashi throws down the same container. The wall full of rays of Miyako’s temple appears again in the movie in the throne which is in the olympic stadium and in which Tetsuo sits.

There’s a huge amount of hidden references in the movie for the inquisitive mind who wants to search for them, but in the end they’re not trivial, but legitimate references which help to give a familiar feeling between both stories. The same happens with the characters, which in one way or another appear in the movie.

Some times, the plot which surrounds the characters disappears in the movie, due to pragmatical reasons of condensing a manga which had more than 2000 pages in a two-hour movie. But Ôtomo put these characters in other roles, to increase the amount of references between both movies.

But these differences between the stories don’t mean that the stories are enemies. The movie is not a perversion of the manga, but a different way to see the same story. Like watching the same object from one point of view, and then from other point. Actually, the stories have points in common even in parts of the manga which weren’t written when the movie was made. In my opinion, the stories are complementary, and each one serves as explanation and learning to understand the other a little bit better.

And then, each one has its own virtues: the manga is very direct, sometimes with frenetic action, while the movie takes advantage of long lyrical moments, almost reflexive and meditative. But both stories are, once again, complementary and not enemies. A strange mixture of adaptation, rewriting and reinvention.

I’m not going to extend about the manga’s merits, nor the movie’s ones; both marked a before and after of how the manga and anime were understood both in the west and in Japan. But I hope that this little article is some kind of boost for the ones who have enjoyed only one of them to dare to enjoy the other.

And as a little trivia, there’s a new version in project, which will be divided in two movies and happens in… New Manhattan. Let’s see.

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