Akira is the gift that keeps on giving, a proto-cyberpunk vision of the apocalypse that has only gotten more ineffably cool as the decades have rolled on. Pretty much all of its iconography—the pill jacket, the bike, the anime boy freaking the fuck out, the bloom of the mushroom cloud, that shrieking sentient music—acts as a shorthand for the entire film, which is part of why this recreation of it works so well. The fan film’s just under a minute long, but it zeroes in on individual elements from the series, all recreated with a lurid, hallucinatory intensity. It’s like the film’s forever-in-development live-action remake finally stuttered to life with Nicolas Winding Refn at the helm.
As it turns out, it was just an off-hours project by two friends who wanted to express their ongoing devotion to the film. There’s a lot more information on their site—including a sort-of funny quote from original director Katsushiro Otomo saying he is “mostly okay with” the idea of a remake. It’s sort of weird to see something like this on the internet and not have it connected to a project or Kickstarter or something, but that truly seems to be the case here. Nevertheless, someone please give these guys enough money to remake the whole movie, or do whatever the fuck else they want with it. This is a minute very well spent.
[via Kottke]