FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W1978362803> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W1978362803 endingPage "315" @default.
• W1978362803 startingPage "295" @default.
• W1978362803 abstract "From Ground Zero to Degree Zero: Akira from Origin to Oblivion Christopher Bolton (bio) Let me begin with my own origin story. It was in March 1990 at the Music Box Theater in Chicago that I first saw Akira, and as the anime unfolded from its astonishing opening sequence, it set off a reaction in me. It was one of a series of encounters with Japanese film and fiction that year that propelled a software engineer improbably into graduate school in Japanese literature, as if the light coming off the theater screen had changed me in parallel with the film’s story of psychic radiation, mutation, and transformation. 1 And clearly I was not alone. For anyone seeking the origins of the anime boom in the United States, Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s 1988 film is an irresistible starting point. One of the most lavishly produced anime to date, Akira brought anime from U.S. TV screens onto movie screens, a format suited to the epic physical scale of Ōtomo’s story. Even its limited U.S. theatrical release in 1989 and 1990 attracted wide attention from audiences and critics. This has led many to identify Akira as the origin or ground zero for the explosion of anime’s popularity in North America in the 1990s. 2 In what follows I will examine Akira’s critical reception in the United States, to ask what was unique about this film at the time and what remains remarkable twenty-five years later. Paradoxically, Akira has been regarded [End Page 295] both as a watershed moment in the history of anime and as an attempt to erase history itself, based primarily on its frenetic visuals and complex plot. I would like to look more concretely at the visual language of Akira by comparing it with a similar story in a different medium, the epic Akira manga that Ōtomo authored in parallel with the film. The comparison shows more specifically how the visual language of the film and the manga support or undermine the search for the kind of historical and political narratives we might associate with decisive origins or causes. GROUND ZERO: AKIRA’S NUCLEAR ORIGINS The characterization of Akira as a kind of bombshell that set off the anime boom is all the more tempting given the film’s opening sequence, which is a literal explosion. The film fades in on an aerial view of a city, with the superimposed title “1988.7.16. Tokyo” (the date of the film’s Japanese release). As the camera pans up to take in more and more of the distant city, there is the sound of wind on the otherwise silent soundtrack, and then a dome of alternating light and darkness appears at a distant point in the city’s center. It illuminates the entire city in a harsh glare and then expands toward the viewer, sweeping away the city, until the light fills the frame (Figure 1). Slowly, an aerial view of a new, transformed city resolves itself out of this whiteness. An echoing drumbeat marks a transition to a more musical soundtrack, and a second title appears: “31 years after WW III. AD 2019 Neo Tokyo.” This ninety-second opening image—of a detonation that heralds violent change and renewal—became a metaphor for the influence of Akira on North American popular culture and anime’s fortunes in the United States. As one popular guide to anime has it, “Just as the bubble of Japan’s economy of the 1980s was about to burst, a bomb of a more positive nature detonated, with the premier of Akira.”3 But of course the more disturbing parallel is between this opening detonation and the atomic bombings of Japan. To see Akira in the United States in 1990 was to be transported back in history to the moment of Hiroshima at the very same instant one seemed to be lifted out of the story and out of the theater to see a flash of a new future for Japanese film (Figure 2).4 In fact, these two senses of the explosion—as a celebratory, artistic, even metatextual one that seems to productively explode the rules or boundaries a..." @default.
• W1978362803 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W1978362803 creator A5073355667 @default.
• W1978362803 date "2014-01-01" @default.
• W1978362803 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W1978362803 title "From Ground Zero to Degree Zero: Akira from Origin to Oblivion" @default.
• W1978362803 cites W1537640319 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W166315768 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W1984645963 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W2020532272 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W2049594821 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W2129631674 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W2795883422 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W2798788303 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W3146212165 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W582900771 @default.
• W1978362803 cites W631632579 @default.
• W1978362803 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/mec.2014.0017" @default.
• W1978362803 hasPublicationYear "2014" @default.
• W1978362803 type Work @default.
• W1978362803 sameAs 1978362803 @default.
• W1978362803 citedByCount "3" @default.
• W1978362803 countsByYear W19783628032016 @default.
• W1978362803 countsByYear W19783628032022 @default.
• W1978362803 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W1978362803 hasAuthorship W1978362803A5073355667 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C118130439 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C127413603 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C154945302 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C2776815978 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C2780518707 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C2780586970 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C2780813799 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C41008148 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C41895202 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C78519656 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C118130439 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C124952713 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C127413603 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C138885662 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C142362112 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C154945302 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C17744445 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C199539241 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C2776815978 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C2780518707 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C2780586970 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C2780813799 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C41008148 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C41895202 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C52119013 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C78519656 @default.
• W1978362803 hasConceptScore W1978362803C95457728 @default.
• W1978362803 hasIssue "1" @default.
• W1978362803 hasLocation W19783628031 @default.
• W1978362803 hasOpenAccess W1978362803 @default.
• W1978362803 hasPrimaryLocation W19783628031 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W1953908484 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W1978362803 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2161377422 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2206407606 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2476201442 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2899084033 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2908043658 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W2978511613 @default.
• W1978362803 hasRelatedWork W4376854320 @default.
• W1978362803 hasVolume "9" @default.
• W1978362803 isParatext "false" @default.
• W1978362803 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W1978362803 magId "1978362803" @default.
• W1978362803 workType "article" @default.