Akira (1988)

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Overview

Production Development

 Mitaka, Tokyo.

The film was divided into four parts, with 783 individual scenes.  The most important part of production was the storyboard phase. 

 Akira storyboards.

All storyboards and preliminary drawings were done by Otomo himself. He storyboarded every possible scene and then cutout  unnecessary scenes afterward, which was a very time consuming process.
 
 “I threw all my energy into this phase because I knew it would help every other part of the production.” – Katsuhiro Otomo 

 
Each segment was made for 70mm film as it was determined that the intricacy of the drawing required the larger format. Added to the complexity was the variety of colours sampled, with 327 distinct colours used in the production. This was considerably more than a normal Japanese animation at that time. Most of the action also takes place at night, another stark contrast to conventional anime. These scenes did not use the traditional blue tones to give the effect of night. Art Director, Toshiharu Mizutani, wished to use an unorthodox scheme of reds and greens, and Ôtomo approved. All of these fresh approaches helped give the film a distinctive visual quality and style. 

 Voice actors for Kaneda and Kai.

 
Pre-recorded dialogue was used, with the animation following afterward to match the timing and mouth movements. A device called the Quick-Action Recorder checked whether the dialogue was in sync with the picture. This was a revolutionary process for Japanese animation. Otomo personally directed the voice-actors. He ended up using many unknown voice-actors as he felt the others all sounded the same. The Synclavier audio system was used for the first time in a Japanese animation. Another unique experiment was the use of artist group, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, who believe the human voice is the greatest musical instrument.