Kanedaaaaaaaaaaaa! Tetsuooooooooooooo!
After kicking off September with a look at Troma’s original trashterpiece The Toxic Avenger (listen) and celebrating our 350th episode at the Titty Twister in From Dusk Till Dawn (listen), were making our second foray into the world of anime (following our discussion of Perfect Blue) in Katsuhiro Otomo‘s seminal and incredibly influential film Akira (1988), an adaptation of his manga of the same name.
In Akira, Japan is reeling from a nuclear blast that destroyed Tokyo in 1988, leading to World War III. In 2019, Neo-Tokyo is now a cesspool of government corruption, gang violence and terrorism. The film focuses on biker gang leader Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata) and his lover best friend Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki).
When the latter acquires telekinetic abilities after nearly running over a childlike “esper,” he is abducted by the morally suspect Colonel Shikishima (Tarō Ishida). Kaneda teams up with resistance movement activist Kei (Mami Koyama) to find his lover friend before he loses control of his powers and starts another World War.
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Episode 351: Akira (1988)
Hop on your motorcycle, avoid that “child” in the road and slide to a stop because we’re discussing Katsuhiro Otomo‘s seminal anime Akira (1988)!
Join us as we offer a primer on all things Akira, as well as its influences on, uh, everything. We then work our way through its very, very dense plot, which somehow condenses hundreds of manga pages into a 2-hour runtime. This includes a queer read for Kaneda and Tetsuo, as well as debating whether or not the film has a “woman problem.”
Plus: raisin-faced “children,” singularities, and one horrifying sequence involving malevolent stuffed animals (and a lot of “milk”).
Cross out Akira!
Coming Up Next: We’re heading to Bodega Bay to check in with Alfred Hitchcock and some pesky avian antagonists in The Birds (1963).
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The post Best “Friend” Body Horror in the Influential ‘Akira’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
