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[Banjo-Tron]

Always a fun question; what was Akira about?

Oh Noes! Tokyo takes a big nuke in the ass!
Phew it's OK though, can has Neo-Tokyo instead, yay!
Tetsuo Jealous of Kaneda, who has the aforementioned kick-ass bike. He is also smaller, and has a large forehead. Probably small penis as well.
There is some government conspiracy things.
Tetsuo gets some powers and blows some people up.
Government space cannon blows Tetsuo's arm off.
Tetsuo don't care, he build new arm!
The government do more consiracies, StoOpid government! The sheeple riot!
Mr Nezu OD's on pills.
Tetsuo smashes tanks, Kaneda shoots him, More laser pain for Tetsuo
This make Tetsuo ANGRY! Grows all big and shit spills out of his robo arm. His girlfriend ends up in a big anus and is squished. NICE.
Then Akira sort of comes back and buckwheats Tetsuo. Or something. Then comes reealy small and falls into Kaneda's hand.
Kaneda drives off into the sunset, his cool bike is broken BUT STILL WORKS KINDA!
Plus he now has a chick as well. TEH END

[RhA]

Kid gets psychic powers, goes goddamn ballistic, and ends up being in one of the best films of all time.

Oh Noes! Tokyo takes a big nuke in the ass!
Phew it's OK though, can has Neo-Tokyo instead, yay!
Tetsuo Jealous of Kaneda, who has the aforementioned kick-ass bike. He is also smaller, and has a large forehead. Probably small penis as well.
There is some government conspiracy things.
Tetsuo gets some powers and blows some people up.
Government space cannon blows Tetsuo's arm off.
Tetsuo don't care, he build new arm!
The government do more consiracies, StoOpid government! The sheeple riot!
Mr Nezu OD's on pills.
Tetsuo smashes tanks, Kaneda shoots him, More laser pain for Tetsuo
This make Tetsuo ANGRY! Grows all big and shit spills out of his robo arm. His girlfriend ends up in a big anus and is squished. NICE.
Then Akira sort of comes back and buckwheats Tetsuo. Or something. Then comes reealy small and falls into Kaneda's hand.
Kaneda drives off into the sunset, his cool bike is broken BUT STILL WORKS KINDA!
Plus he now has a chick as well. TEH END

That's what happened, not what it was about.

[Banjo-Tron]

That's what happened, not what it was about.

Oh. Well it was about AIDS.

[RhA]

That's what happened, not what it was about.

Oh. Well it was about AIDS.

It's been more than 10 years since both AIDS and Akira, so it's funny now.

[Shadowman]

That's what happened, not what it was about.

I'll let Cracked say it for me:

[...]you have to admit that it is, indeed, a pretty **** up thing to be Japanese. You're confined to an isolated island for the vast majority of your cultural development - an island regularly beset by massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and typhoons - and when you eventually do emerge from your isolation, you become the only society to ever have nuclear weaponry deployed against them. Consider all of those factors, and then watch one of those tsunami videos; it's easy to see why so many of their movies seem to think of cities as "those things that just go away sometimes." Akira's imagery relies heavily on this concept of civilization as an impermanent thing: Cities are fragile beings in the movie. They can, and frequently do, dissolve away into nothing right before the character's eyes.

Tetsuo and Kaneda are both fifteen years old in Akira, and they're already members of a brutal motorcycle gang. That was, and to some extent still is, a real concern in Japan: They're called Bosozoku gangs, and don't let their hilarious cartoon vehicles fool you: In the late '80s, violent teenage motorcycle gangs were right at the top of the media scare list in Japan, kind of like Muslims and terrorism are in the US today. The age of the characters is key in Akira, both in tying the main characters to the phobias of that culture, and also in dealing with all of the teenage emotional mainstays: Sex, hormones, and puberty. And Akira is very much about puberty. The finale of the movie has one of Tetsuo's limbs engorging, growing out of control, and engulfing his girlfriend; it's not exactly shooting for subtlety.

tl;dr version: It's about being a screwed up hormonal teenager in a screwed up perpetually doomed civilization.

[BeastProwl]

[Banjo-Tron]

AKIRA - also possessor of best end credit music ever.

Something else to ponder, Akira came out about 1 year after Transformers: The Movie. But the animation is leaps ahead of it. And TF: The Movie was pretty good in its own right.

[RhA]

That's what happened, not what it was about.

I'll let Cracked say it for me:

[...]you have to admit that it is, indeed, a pretty **** up thing to be Japanese. You're confined to an isolated island for the vast majority of your cultural development - an island regularly beset by massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and typhoons - and when you eventually do emerge from your isolation, you become the only society to ever have nuclear weaponry deployed against them. Consider all of those factors, and then watch one of those tsunami videos; it's easy to see why so many of their movies seem to think of cities as "those things that just go away sometimes." Akira's imagery relies heavily on this concept of civilization as an impermanent thing: Cities are fragile beings in the movie. They can, and frequently do, dissolve away into nothing right before the character's eyes.

Tetsuo and Kaneda are both fifteen years old in Akira, and they're already members of a brutal motorcycle gang. That was, and to some extent still is, a real concern in Japan: They're called Bosozoku gangs, and don't let their hilarious cartoon vehicles fool you: In the late '80s, violent teenage motorcycle gangs were right at the top of the media scare list in Japan, kind of like Muslims and terrorism are in the US today. The age of the characters is key in Akira, both in tying the main characters to the phobias of that culture, and also in dealing with all of the teenage emotional mainstays: Sex, hormones, and puberty. And Akira is very much about puberty. The finale of the movie has one of Tetsuo's limbs engorging, growing out of control, and engulfing his girlfriend; it's not exactly shooting for subtlety.

tl;dr version: It's about being a screwed up hormonal teenager in a screwed up perpetually doomed civilization.

Or- In short, you say evolution. The core of Akira lies in change (HAHA TRANSFORMERS), as best described in the movie itself. Remember the Amoeba-speech, there's your 'about'.

Effing great flick.

[BeastProwl]

[Burn]

Boy loves his french fries.