Akira 35th Anniversary Box Set

Product Information

Kurosawa’s first film was such a success that the studio leaned on the director to make a sequel. The result is a hugely entertaining adventure, reuniting most of the major players from the original and featuring a two-part narrative in which Sanshiro first fights a pair of Americans and then finds himself the target of a revenge mission undertaken by the brothers of the original film’s villain. On a Technical Note: While I prefer the original right-to-left orientation of the 35th Anniversary box-set, Kodansha is still using the Dark Horse translation that appeared before Japanese formatting surprised the hell out of US publishers by catching on. It's only as big a deal as you make it, in my opinion; but if you can't stand the R-to-L format, and don't give a shit about 'preserving the artist's original vision', or whatever (does that sound right?), you can still find the Western oriented format in print, for a while, anyway.

This particular collection is a high-quality reprint of the work, all collected in six beautiful hardcover volumes and is bundled together with the hardcover Akira Club art book and an exclusive pill patch. Each hardcover book has a revised translation, the original right-to-left reading format, new lettering, and Otomo's original hand-drawn sound effects for that extra visual punch.I also like how the movie feels so different, less personal and way more nuanced and political, it really makes both these works unique and worth consuming, over and over. What I found out, ironically enough, is that the film adaptation and the source books are vastly different stories. The manga series is rather large, so one would obviously think that many subplots and miniature story arcs would need to be condensed or altogether scrapped, like many films need to do. But no, this is an entirely different story. Same beginning, similar climax, but virtually every plot beat that happens in the book is completely different than the film. Where the film "ends" is approximately 40% of the way through the story, but it uses the same climax that the series has. Odd.

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of The Huge Sandman Box Set Being Over 50% Off So what makes this box set so special? Image: Kodansha Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low ( Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.The story decides to focus a bit too much on too many characters, making the important moments for the ones who really matter hit way less. The positive and weirdly nationalist ending is also very hard to believe and take serious.