Both the anime movie and the manga start with a huge black explosion. The metropolitan city of Tokyo is destroyed. Years pass, it’s 2019: Neo-Tokyo is a wasteland. Bikers, punks and other criminals populate a city made of ruins and glamorous futuristic skyscrapers.
Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo is the anime that changed everything. Stunning visuals, compelling story, mature topics and a cyberpunk look still fresh today, Akira opened the way for the anime invasion. 33 years after its release Otomo’s masterpiece remains a cornerstone of animation and japanese culture as well.
I first heard about Akira in a fan letter sent to the mail column of an old manga (pretty common in 90s manga italian editions). I remember this image of a kid dressed in leather near an incredible motorbike. Just a few months later I found the dvd in a bookshop and bought it. I saw Akira for the first time when I was 13, on an analog tv, and I was blown away. What impressed me the most were the music 1, the city and the final scene.
In this week newsletter we’ll have a look to an amazing book (and its predecessor). I am talking about Anime Architecture by Stefan Riekeles.
My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #4.
Insights
The Harumi Apartments by Kunio Maekawa is considered one of the first great modern japanese buildings. Maekawa, that worked with LeCorbusier and was the master of Kenzo Tange, projects an intensively inhabited building, but managing to keeping it slim and rooted to the ground thanks to the base that is slightly larger than the rest. It has numerous debts to the Unitè by LeC, but still has a crisp and interesting look. I always liked this drawing because it shows the short side of the building, and without knowing the project (giving it a fast look) one might think that is a sort of skyscraper. But mostly I like this projects because it really reminds me of an elevation drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo in his manga Domu. You can have a look at the drawing in this great insight by Socks Studio (first image).
Arata Isozaki founded part of his thought on the consequences of a destruction. Let’s just think about his work for the Milan Triennale in 1968, the famous Re-Ruined Hiroshima. He was really impressed by the destruction caused by the atomic bombings, and also in a mature project as the post-modern pastiche Tsukuba Science City (1985) he manages to introduce the theme. To really understand his thoughts I’ll leave a citation by him:
My memories of running for cover have somehow mingled with the thrills I felt as a child in a mirror maze or a horror show. […] When I heard the news that Hiroshima, which lay right across the bay from where I lived, had been destroyed, when I saw photographs of its ruined scenery, I still could not grasp the significance of that instantaneous flash of light. But when I saw the film of a mushroom cloud rising over Bikini Atoll, I felt ecstasy as well as terror. […] To produce work only for it to be destroyed is a contradiction of the essential meaning of the word “architecture”, because to build is to make something permanent.
Very beautiful links
Anime Architecture is a book edited by Thames&Hudson, but it was also released in a deluxe version on the website Volume. It is a sort of Kickstarter for high-profile curated volumes, and browsing the website is possible to find incredible gems.
When looking at the amazing visuals in the book you might think: how the hell did they do it? That’s how they did it:
They are building Howl’s Moving Castle.
If you are more into Studio Ghibli’s movies you might wanna watch this tiny series aired on japanese television NHK. It follows the work of the master Hayao Miyazaki, just 4 episodes, free and with a lot of different subtitle languages. Especially recommended if you enjoyed Never-ending Man.
Talking about masters. Naoki Urasawa, author of acclaimed mangas as 20th Century Boys and Billy Bat, is also the mind behind a great series of video called Manben. In the series he interviews emerging and veteran mangakas on their ideas and their work. It is really a joy watching these great artists drawing. You can watch the entire series with english subtitles at this link. It’s also really fun that the website is just a fan-made website, where an english-speaking guy translate the subtitles and add them to the video. Plus it uses the website as a sort of personal diary, so you can read all his misadventures.
An absolutely incredible project that mash-ups The Simpsons and Akira. The result is coherent and perfect. I still think about that shop selling it in Haight-Ashbury some years ago, and me not buying it because I was poor, arrrrgh!
A group of professional 3D animators replicated some scenes from Akira. They look insanely good.
There is an Akira artbook called Akira Club. Is not suuuper expensive but is not cheap either. You can find it here, in that pithole full of amazing things that is Archive.org.
Sweet IG pages
Stefan Riekeles is the curator of Anime Architecture. He’s currently sharing some images from the book, so you can take a look. Plus, since the book is already sold-out, you can directly purchase signed copies from him.
This Akira fan is buying original art from the movie, but also mangas, cels, posters and everything related to Katsuhiro Otomo. He’s called Otomochaser!
Misc
I introduced the book in the first part of the newsletter but I never showed it. Here for you, next to its predecessor.
AA is almost 10 years younger than Proto Anime. I bought the latter 4 years ago at the Tchoban Foundation (Museum of Architectural Drawing), and even if they share similar content I decided to purchase Anime Architecture as well.
The differences are in the quality of some illustrations. As Riekeles explains some of the drawings were re-scanned to achieve a perfect image. The paper is thick and smooth, the smell of the book is wonderful.
Another difference between the two is that AA’s index is by anime movie, and the Proto Anime’s one is by author. So in AA the focus is mostly on the movies, with some succulent additions compared to Proto Anime as Tekkonkinkreet and Ghost in the Shell Innocence.
Maybe there are a couple of things that Proto Anime enlights better. For example the insights on Haruhiko Hagami’s photos, that in AA are just a few. But also some sweet storyboards by animator Koji Morimoto, completeley absent in AA. But except from that AA is probably a more complete and good looking book.
In conclusion Anime Architecture is a precious and fantastic book, that really shows and really explains the best images from some great anime movies. It also shows how the role of well-crafted imagined architectures is fundamental to achieve a coherent and polished narrative.
This week newsletter (#4) is over. As usual I’ll leave a small quote, in this case from an Otomo interview published some years ago on Forbes:
“Talking about first time direction, I was interested in movie direction from my high school days. So when I was 25 and I had a bit of money from the success of some of my manga, I spent around 5 million yen to make a 16mm live-action movie that was around an hour long. In making my own private movie, I was able to study the process of making movies on my own. From this experience, I then knew roughly how to go about making and directing movies.”
As simple as that.
See you next week, ciao!
Federico
This one is my favorite.