Did You Know?
This was one of the first Japanese anime films to have the character's voices recorded before they were animated. While this is the typical practice in U.S. animation, in Japan the animation is generally produced first.
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The film was re-released in 2001 with a new voice dub and soundtrack, reportedly costing over $1 million.
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At one point in the 1990s, Sony contemplated a live-action version of the film, but scrapped the idea when the projected budget went north of US$300 million.
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The music for the film was completed before any of the composers saw a frame of film or read the script. The music did have to be edited to fit some scenes though.
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The production budget was nearly $10 million, a record sum for a Japanese animation film.
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The movie consists of 2,212 shots and 160,000 single pictures, 2-3 times more than usual, using 327 different colors (another record in animation film), 50 of which were exclusively created for the film. The reason for this statistic is that most of the movie takes place at night, a setting that is traditionally avoided by animators because of the increased color requirements.
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Katsuhiro Ohtomo originally created the AKIRA manga as an homage to manga artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama, who created Tetsujin nijûhachi-go (Tetsujin 28). Both AKIRA and Tetsujin 28 have a main character named Shotaro Kaneda and Akira's no. 28 designation compares with the robot's no.28 designation.
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The 1940s-style song heard following the terrorist bombing is "Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy", released in 1951 by jazz singer Teruko Akatsuki. The song was not included in either the Japanese or American releases of the soundtrack; however, it had previously appeared on the release of the soundtrack from MASH.
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Because Madman Entertainment Pty. Ltd. licensed Akira through Manga Entertainment rather than Pioneer/Geneon, the Australian DVD release of Akira has both the original Streamline dub (which Manga has the license to) and Pioneer/Geneon's new English dub.
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In the scene where Kaneda is at the jukebox you can see the logos of three famous classic rock bands: Cream, Led Zeppelin and The Doors.
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