Akira and Signs of Collapse
By Naren Varadarajan
What do people hold on to, when the world around them turns to dust? This is obviously an incredibly difficult question to answer, given just how many assumptions each answer would be making. The natural response might be our friends and family, but what if those too slowly vanished? Would there even be anything left? More importantly, how on earth would humanity even progress, if such a catastrophe were to occur?
This question, and the numerous responses and further questions that surround it, are at the core of Akira. Set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian Tokyo dominated by biker gangs and ruthless military control, the film follows two members of one such gang, Tetsuo and Kaneda. Each night, they take to the city on their bikes to duke it out with the other gangs, causing all kinds of mayhem. It almost seems as though their sole goal is to destroy what little order is left, and revel in their freedom. The bikes they ride become like extensions of themselves, objects to be envied, symbols of power. The streets they ride through are filled with glaring neon lights and garishly animated signage, contrasting sharply with the rubble and poverty below them.
Why? Why, in a city wracked with such huge, existential threats to its existence, do these lights shine so brightly? There is almost a sense of desperation, as though the lights and the bikes are some misplaced attempt to reassert that humanity is present and thriving. Here, in this strange contradiction, lies the answer that Akira offers to the initial question: when things turn to dust, we hold on to symbols from the past. The world they belonged to, and the kind of society they reflected, become more important than the world that currently exists.
This answer isn’t a unique one, but is continually expanded on as the film goes on. There is also a hierarchy here, in the kinds of symbols people possess. Tetsuo from the outset is clearly jealous of Kaneda’s bike and jacket, resenting them as direct proof of his lack of power. As protests rage across the city against the state, Tetsuo finds himself caught up in a military conspiracy when he witnesses a runaway test subject with psychic powers being hunted down. This leads to him being captured and becoming a test subject himself, resulting in the awakening of his own psychic abilities. These newfound abilities are to Tetsuo, the ultimate way of asserting his dominance over not just Kaneda, but everyone else, as he makes short work of the other psychics and escapes the facility.
His power isn’t a symbol of some failed society, but a tool to destroy other symbols and reshape society as he sees fit. Neon signs and flashy bikes are reduced to flimsy nothings before him. The military attempts to hunt him down, as he evades them, waiting to grow strong enough that he might face them head-on. Eventually, he does, effortlessly slaughtering any that try to stop him. He fashions a throne for himself in the middle of a stadium, drunk on the thought of being able to do anything he wants. Tetsuo’s happiness is short-lived though, as soon after his powers begin to overwhelm him.
They turn him into an amorphous blob, that swallows up everything before it indiscriminately, revealing the truth of Tetsuo’s worldview. His obsession with power and destroying symbols led him to view other people as symbols: soldiers as symbols of the state, and Kaneda as a symbol of his own incompetence. This twisted view is what manifests as a destructive force, only stopped by the appearance of the first psychic to have ever been made, Akira. In one swift blow, Akira annihilates the blob and causes Tokyo to be struck yet again by a massive explosion. Curiously, this explosion harms no one, only affecting buildings and other inanimate objects.
It’s fitting in a way, that this is how the film ends, given that this explosion is also a kind of conclusion to the initial question. Akira (the psychic, not the film), in destroying all these objects, communicates that the only way to progress is to destroy every symbol there is. In choosing which symbols to keep and which to destroy, there is a risk of choosing which parts of the past are better than others. While this seems like a fairly straightforward thing to do, the more insidious part of this exercise is how exactly these parts are chosen.
They are ultimately chosen in accordance with some value system — Tetsuo chooses the parts that let him assert his power, and the military wants to pick the parts that let them keep control over Tokyo. In other words, these methods of choosing would really just reproduce the society that already exists, not really moving it forward, because past values are selected based on current values. There can’t be any choosing done. Everything needs to be burned down, all symbols purged, and society built anew atop the rubble. When the world turns to dust, we burn it until we have nothing left to hold on to, except the promise of something better.
