The landmark Japanese cyberpunk animation from 1988 re-emerges as a deeply strange nightmare about destruction and rebirth

A deeply strange message from the future is what this movie is here to (re)deliver: both post- and pre-apocalyptic, a nuclear-age parable of anxiety to compare with Godzilla. Akira, released in 1988, is the cult Japanese cyberpunk animation from director Katsuhiro Ôtomo, who also created the original manga serial. (It is set in the impossibly futuristic year of 2019, so maybe last year would actually have been the time to rerelease it.)

Thirty years on from a devastating explosion that razed the city, a new capital – Neo-Tokyo – has been born: sprawling, chaotic, like the LA of Blade Runner. The city is beset with violence from warring motorbike gangs, and by protesters rioting against unfair taxes. A hatchet-faced army officer says that Neo-Tokyo is “a garbage heap made of hedonistic fools”.