Midweek Mention... Akira

Akira

Sidey: Hello. Hi.

Cris: How are you guys?

Dan: I'm very well actually, Chris, because I've just watched a- an amazing game of football.

Cris: Okay. Football. With,

Dan: football ... although, yeah, football. Cape Verde have just

Cris: drawn- Thrashed Spain nil-nil. Thrashed

Dan: Spain nil-nil.

Sidey: a spectacle

Reegs: spectacle.

Cris: It

Dan: What a result. It is. I mean, we're gonna talk about films, but I'd imagine over the next month or so a little bit of football chat might sneak into

Reegs: bleed into the pod.

Dan: may do.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: I think next week the plan is to record on the night of the England game. That's right. And Peter's going to be here. Oh,

Reegs: Peter's going

Cris: to

Reegs: be here. Oh, no. Oh.

Sidey: And he's picked some England-centric- Oh, has he?

Cris: he? Films- Yes

Sidey: watch. Yeah.

Dan: Escape to Victory and,

Cris: it hasn't- No, no. No

Sidey: hasn't picked that and all... No. He hasn't picked that. I know what they are, so I can, I can let you know at the end. But this right here is nothing to do with football really. No. There's very little ball content in Akira.

Reegs: No. Sort of glowing orbs and spheres and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Some of that, but

Dan: but Is, is this kind of inspired by our motorcycle week

Sidey: of that, but- Is, is this kind of inspired by our motorcycle week- It is, yeah ... that followed? 'Cause I hadn't seen this before, but I was still aware of the motorcycle in it, and that sequence where

Reegs: The Akira slide. Yeah. It's been ... I watched a three and a half minute video of all of it being referenced- Right ... multiple times across animation and-

Sidey: Which is where he slides sort of to the side on the

Reegs: Yeah, on the bike. On the motorbike. It's about three or four minutes into the movie, right? The Akira slide. Yeah. It's pretty early on. But yeah, it's one of the most famous shots in animation. And like a lot of this film, parts of its aesthetic and parts of its plot have bled into popular culture or influenced popular culture in so many different ways. Mm.

Dan: 'Cause it was made in 1908? Yeah. Yeah, 18- Or '88. '88, yeah. Something around then.

Cris: mate. 1988. Katsuhiro

Sidey: 1988. Katsuhiro Otomo.

Reegs: Yeah. And d- from an original manga series, Yeah ... that w- came out in 1982, which I haven't read or any of it. No.

Sidey: I

Dan: haven't. This was new to me, although when I started to watch it, I realized I had seen certain parts of it before. Again, probably just referenced in popular culture, which I'm all over, of

Reegs: Yeah. Known for that.

Dan: You know? No, yeah.

Sidey: didn't know anything about it really, but I don't watch a lot of manga.

Reegs: No.

Sidey: And this is probably the first real pro- manga-y thing that we've watched for the pod- Yeah ... I would say. We've done- We've done, we've done- ... like

Dan: Studio Ghibli kind of

Sidey: animation stuff, but this is more, this is like, I would say-

Dan: Have you ever heard of Crunchyroll? No.

Sidey: No.

Dan: That's a p- that's like a whole- Like a dictionary ... that's a whole channel dedicated to, And my daughter watches it all the time. Okay. She's really into it, and I think she got it a little bit from her brother. But

Reegs: yeah, so- Crunchyroll

Dan: Crunchyroll. It's like the, the program, the, the-

Sidey: Oh, have a look

Reegs: you know,

Dan: It works the channel.

Reegs: Yeah. So this, it

Sidey: Yeah So this, it starts off with a shot of Tokyo

Reegs: Yeah. Complete silence, and then like a panning out

Sidey: and looking- Just a just something goes off- Yeah ... and it's destroyed.

Dan: Well, yeah, I thought- It

Cris: with

Reegs: a black thing at the center of it. Yeah. And it just vroom, and just- Right ... sort of subsumes everything. I

Dan: thought it was quite useful for my viewing, anyway, to have read a little bit about the premise of the film before, so, 'cause it's not Tokyo as y- as you know it. There's been a big

Sidey: World War, it's been World War III

Cris: Yeah. There's

Reegs: There's been a big war and and so

Cris: it's futuristic kind

Sidey: of-

Dan: Well, there's been World War III. Yeah. There's been a big war and and so it's futuristic kind of Tokyo rather than what you'd expect to see if you were just saying, "Oh, it's Tokyo." So it has this different kind of vibe around it, and that then gives you an idea of these kind of biker gangs and everything. They're going in and out, 'cause it kinda starts with that, doesn't it? A big chase.

Reegs: chase. Yeah. Well, we get the cold opening of the, the sort of explosion of Tokyo, and then we get the cut to Neo Tokyo, don't we? Yeah, yeah.

Sidey: Does it say how long it's passed? I don't know if they did

Reegs: it's passed since all the- It's tw- it c- puts the time at the futuristic year of 2019. Right. So,

Dan: COVID.

Reegs: Perfect. Yeah, yeah.

Cris: We're

Sidey: They're only probably gonna be about 10 years out.

Cris: and

Reegs: it's new To- Neo Tokyo is built on reclaimed land of the, what was destroyed of the old Tokyo. And there's just a load of stuff up front establishing the plot. There's like, there's like riots going on because of tax and stuff like that. Yeah. And what else is going on? There's unemployment. There's all sorts. Gang warfare, because we've got the, the bikers, which

Sidey: it reminded

Dan: me of- Social class

Sidey: a little bit like the Warriors, 'cause you've got these gangs, and a little bit Clockwork Orangey with these young kids- Yeah ... who are in these gangs.

Reegs: The Capsules, they're, they're called, aren't

Sidey: got a capsule on his back. He's, he's sort of get up, although it's a different color, it might have been a little bit of Drive. You know, he's got that famous- Yeah ... bomber jacket with the... So he's got a scorpion on it, I think, Ryan Gosling. Yeah. This way, he's got the- The capsule ... the capsule logo on the

Reegs: That's Tetsuo, isn't it? And Kan-

Sidey: h- that's, he's Kaneda with the- Yeah ... does it, no, was it him who had the jacket on?

Reegs: Kaneda had the jacket, and Tetsuo is also a part of the Capsules gang. Yeah. And you see them racing these fucking crazy, like- Clowns ... Juggalo clown bikers through the city, which is when we get the Akira slide. Yeah. Quite early on.

Sidey: And,

Dan: well, at one point he falls off his bike, doesn't he? He has to get back on. He kind of, "Fuck." Like Yeah.

Sidey: Like, yeah.

Dan: 'Cause this was quite difficult to find online. There wasn't a wealth of places offering this, so I had to find it in the depths of the internet, and the first place I looked had it in Japanese, and my Japanese pretty good,

Cris: Yes.

Sidey: you've been there,

Cris: I was gonna say, yeah ... how I, I- You've learned it at that sex hotel, no?

Dan: s- you learn a lot in a sex hotel. Yeah. And yeah, I've been there, you know, for nearly two weeks, so I picked up quite a lot, obviously, but, Just from the sex? Just the- Just, just, yeah, but that was... I got rid of it a lot. Yeah. I went

Cris: or just- Just the, just it... Yeah, but that was, I probably got rid of- Well, you didn't leave. It was like Old Boy. I went, obviously got rid of a lot quite quickly.

Dan: I picked up. Yeah. But I was able- Maybe, maybe you

Sidey: maybe missed out a bit of the nuance

Dan: a bit of nuance. Possibly. So then I found,

Sidey: yeah

Reegs: a,

Dan: a, a, an English version, yeah.

Cris: Yeah. Oh,

Reegs: what, dubbed? I went with subtitles.

Sidey: subtitles, yeah

Cris: No, I,

Dan: with subtitles. Yeah, I went with subtitles, yeah. No, I, I've, I've got it dubbed,

Reegs: The dub is supposed to be quite good, actually. Yeah. So, Yeah.

Dan: Dub be good to me.

Cris: I think for animation it's probably the, the only time it actually works, because you can't really... It, it doesn't go over the lip reading or you, you know,

Sidey: it's- Yeah, sometimes with the Ghibli ones, they use, like, really famous voice actors to do it, and it takes me out of the thing a little bit. But with this, I just went Japanese. It d- in fact, where I was watching it, I don't think there was an option to dub

Dan: but with this I just went Japanese. In fact,

Sidey: dub-based version. I just had to

Dan: version. I was just- Yeah, I would've preferred subtitles, to be honest, because then it could've just improved

Sidey: And then I try, find myself trying to piece together what word might mean what, and I can- Yeah ... almost pick out their names sometimes, but that's about it.

Reegs: it. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, we have this big battle through the streets, and explosions, and falling over, and all this stuff, and then Tetsuo crashes because there's, like, this weird green-skinned kid kinda turns up in the middle of the, the battle. They're gonna be these kind of like precogs. Precogs. A bit like my- espers or something they call them on the Wiki page. Yeah. But I don't think they call them that in

Sidey: the movie No, it wasn't, it w- it

Reegs: No. They're test subjects. They've got numbers under them, but they're basically like, well, Minority

Sidey: we see a guy leading, yeah, we see a guy leading this one through the street. He's being pursued Yeah ... and they don't immediately reveal what this thing is. Yeah But it's, so you see a

Cris: guy leading this one through the street. He's

Reegs: they don't

Cris: immediately reveal what this thing is. Yeah. So you see a

Sidey: hand that maybe looks a funny color or something, and you're like, "What's going on there?" Mm. And very short. Yeah. And eventually he's cornered and gunned down. And he tells, Can't remember who, the, the Precog's name,

Dan: Yeah, he,

Reegs: It's just, it's N- it's Takashi, number 26

Sidey: go and find Ryu. Yeah. Not Street Fighter Ryu.

Reegs: No, a different

Dan: Yeah, he's saying he's run, run, and he just gets absolutely mowed down by the, by the cops. Yeah. And then he just turns round and screams, and with this scream comes, like, destruction of all the glass buildings around. There's a big huge keg that comes tumbling down from a building and

Sidey: seemed to me like probably would've killed hundreds, hundreds of people

Reegs: Could've done easily. Yeah. And, and, and it's probably a good point to just quickly pause to talk about the animation style, 'cause there is a lot of destruction. It's, like, blisteringly kinetic. Like, Yeah ... the camera is always moving, and because it's animated, it, it can do stuff that was in 1988, like the equivalent of what they do with a roving camera via CGI now, where stuff, you know, it comes through, and it was obviously all painstakingly drawn, and every- Yeah frame has some sort of movement or something interesting in it. Even when they're just looking at somebody still, you still see the wind moving their hair or their clothes or- Yeah ... something like that, so. Yeah. It's really, really incredible

Dan: it soon...

Sidey: look at. It,

Reegs: It's

Cris: ob-

Dan: obviously animation, you know? But it, you soon... If you've got any hangups about watching cartoons or animation you soon forget about this because of the way that they use the camera, because of the way that the speed of frames and everything. And it just becomes really absorbing to watch it quite quickly, I felt. Sort of in 10 minutes I was just like,

Reegs: "Wow." Hooked

Dan: know? Really hooked into, into it Yeah Because of the animation was so good, it just... It added to it rather than took anything away, you know? Even though it's not obviously-

Sidey: Yeah. There's- ... real ... a lot of plot. Yeah. And there's a hierarchy within the, the Capsules group. Kaneda is clearly the alpha. Yeah. And Tetsuo is a bit disgruntled about that, and

Reegs: Yeah, well later

Sidey: one that has to be helped and-

Reegs: Yeah, exactly, 'cause he'll talk about when they met him at school, and he was kind of a bit bullied- Yeah ... and a bit sort of meh.

Cris: you know.

Sidey: And Kaneda's also mentioned about his his special bike. It's the, the red bike that we've all seen, and it's specially tricked out. You can only ride it in a certain way. Yeah. It has to do blah, blah, blah. And at one point Tetsuo decides he's gonna nick it and joyride it. Yeah. And it's just, like, leads to his downfall really, 'cause he can't ride it. Yeah. I think it cuts out. Yeah. And it ends up with him being apprehended. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah, well they, they get apprehended and let go loads of times- Yeah ... right? 'Cause before that Colonel Shikishima, we meet him, he ... They take them into the police and they come up with this ridiculous alibi, and then they're let go, which is when

Sidey: They take her with her Tetsuo turns up Take Kei as well. Take

Reegs: yeah, with them, which kind of becomes sort of a love interest for Kaneda,

Sidey: Never really becomes anything, but you can tell he's, he's sweet on her.

Reegs: Well, he's just constantly sex pestering her,

Sidey: Yeah, and she's like, "I'm, we're in the revolution, mate. I'm busy." Yeah.

Reegs: So is this when What's his jobs? Tetsuo gets taken in and he's scanned, and the doctor finds that he's, like, a real powerful

Sidey: a good case for some sort of experimentation perhaps. Yeah.

Dan: d-

Cris: The

Sidey: the doctor's got this weird scanning thing, monitoring device that, that he keeps going back to, and I'm like, "What the fuck is this?"

Reegs: It's like a s- the only thing of CGI in the whole movie, and it's

Sidey: this- Like a 3D kinda hologram- ... music thing ... thing that plays a thing. Ooh. And he can, he can interpret this to be- Yeah ... some sort of measuring device, and he's like, "Wow, this, this thing's

Dan: It's like the brainwaves and stuff.

Sidey: you talking

Reegs: about? And they start talking about Akira, who was essentially blamed for the bomb, the bombing of- So

Sidey: So going into it, I just thought that Akira would be the guy on the bike. I

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Akira doesn't turn up really until the end of the movie. Yeah. Yeah ... but yeah, th- they start talking about him as the guy who was the first psychic, a really powerful psychic who was responsible for what happened in Tokyo- Yeah ... and the subsequent you know, coming to control of this sort of crazy military government. Because we get to see that a few times, like these ridiculous generals just arguing over, like esoterically over nothing, while all this carnage is going on, like in the streets and stuff. Yeah,

Cris: And

Sidey: city, the city ends up, well, it seems to be at the start, but then just is constantly being, like, demolished, like Godzilla's been through there a few times.

Reegs: Godzilla's been through there a few times. But there's riots and stuff going on all the time- Yeah ... as well. I mean, it's not a happy place.

Sidey: doesn't look great.

Reegs: No,

Dan: Nor did the school. You remember they were in this school. I don't know if th- this is they're just saying,

Sidey: chance." Well, they, they just get, they, they get whacked, don't they? They, each one of them, they just stand in line and get fucking hit by the PE teacher- Yeah and then the headmaster. And the office looks quite prim, and then as soon as you go outside, it's just graffiti and- Yeah ... like, destruction, vandalism everywhere. Yeah. That was really Clockwork Orangey,

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, definitely

Reegs: So t- trying to skip through. I just wanna talk about some of the better sequences, like when Tetsuo's in the, the hospital and,

Sidey: it turns out there's three sort of these precogs, isn't there? Yeah. There's, there's the one that, like, misdirects in his floating chair. Yeah. There's the girl who's in a, this bubble. Yeah. She's the real precog one, and, and she c- can seemingly pour herself into, and take over other people- Yeah ... and project herself through them. And then there's the one- Astral projection ... then there's the one that we saw at the start who, who can do this kind of mad telekinesis thing. Yeah. And it's that sort of power that we start to see Tetsuo. He g-

Reegs: When he comes to after being taken to hospital, he like dr- dr- a glass of water just comes flying towards his hand, doesn't it,

Sidey: It's like the Force, but way more destructive. Yeah. He's, he keeps getting these headaches, and it's clear, ... They actually tell him, don't they? They, I think the girl, the little girl one says, you know, "You're p- you need to just chill." You can't

Reegs: use your powers. She's fully Fantino,

Sidey: chill, relax. Yeah. Let, let your powers, let your powers, you know, you need to let them mature and, and get to understand them. But he's-

Reegs: He's straight away using them

Sidey: He's it, it's too much for him.

Reegs: But also they're plaguing him with these nightmarish hallucinations, like when they- Yeah suddenly the girl becomes a giant te- like monstrous teddy bear, and the- Yeah, that's right ... and a truck, and that sort of thing. They're chasing him through- Yeah ... the hall, like these horrible... And then when he comes to, because he's sort of half breaking out at this point now, there's all these like, guys, soldiers with assault rifles

Sidey: just

Reegs: and stuff- That's right, yeah and he just obliterates them with horrible, like it's really graphic- Yeah ... bodies exploding and horrible injuries and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it, it's, it's the second act is kind of a bit of this happening a few times, going into hospital, breaking out- Yeah ... going back in, and then we find out that Kay, that we met earlier, is part of the revolution- Yeah and Kaneda kinda gets reluctantly drawn into it basically 'cause he wants to fuck her.

Sidey: There's like a military coup. Yeah. There's a fucking lot going on- There's a lot going on ... in this movie,

Reegs: on, but it's all gonna come down to getting Akira, Lord Akira back together, getting the ga- band back together.

Sidey: He's been buried, they, they tell him. Yeah. They tell ... T- Tetsuo finds out through basically, like, crushing someone's brain.

Reegs: At the Olympic Stadium Yeah, he's buried underneath the Olympic Stadium

Sidey: buried underneath the

Reegs: At where West Ham play.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: So yeah, he was buried there in the futuristic year of 2019. Yeah,

Sidey: so he goes there and

Reegs: to,

Sidey: happens than, than we're

Reegs: Yeah, 'cause Tetsuo is convinced that if he can get Lord Akira's power or something- Yeah he can, Do some stuff ... stuff, yeah. He's sort of losing the, the plot completely at

Sidey: doesn't really have a plan. No. He's just on a rampage. Yeah. He's been interfered with in, you know, ways he didn't ask for, and he doesn't ... he can't control it. And so he exhumes this enormous sphere, which I think was just a massive, massive, What's it called when you freeze yourself? Cryogenic. Cryogenic thing, and you think it's gonna be Akira or ... 'Cause someone at some, one point says, "There's no such thing as Akira." Yeah. So you're a bit like, "Oh, maybe it's all a myth." What is it? "What is it?" And they eventually ... It's a fucking gigantic thing, which when they eventually cracks it down into the middle, it's, it's parts of this boy- It's sort of samples That have been,

Reegs: and then that's when Shikishima turns up again. He's now- he's turned away the coup, hasn't he? Yeah. His, his own men have, like, fought back against the government who tried to replace

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And he's there, and he's just like, "Yeah, we experimented on him until there's basically nothing left." And you look, and it's just, like, capillaries and

Sidey: Yeah ... bits ... s- like, his, our optic nerve. Yeah. Like a, a slice of his brain. Yeah. There's probably about 20 or so jars that we see of various

Reegs: More, I think

Sidey: But they are just literal, you know, like, on a pa- you know, on a slide and stuff like that. Yeah. There's nothing, nothing left of him. But while- So- ... while this is going on, Tetsuo's powers have become all-consuming really.

Reegs: And unstable.

Sidey: Yeah. He, he's had his

Reegs: lost an arm in

Sidey: an arm ... he s- they, so they use this satellite-based, what is it called, SOL? Yeah. SOL 747 or whatever it is. SOL,

Cris: 747-

Reegs: SOL Campbell, yeah

Sidey: To basically laser him from space- Yeah which, which is what causes him to lose an arm, the first blast does. So he is able to telekinetically

Cris: Telekinetically

Sidey: bring these metal and chips and whatever to create a sort of prosthetic arm. Very reminiscent of

Cris: of "Superman,"

Reegs: II or whatever with the woman in the thing. Yeah. His arm sort of grows, like, robotically. But pretty soon

Sidey: It go, it doesn't last long before that goes completely tits up he sort of- He sits in a ch- in a sort of makeshift chair while, as if the general's there. Yeah. And you can see it, it's just actually growing into the chair and just taking over everything. So he's clearly losing control completely.

Reegs: over the next sort of five or 10 minutes, he'll turn into an abomination, a grotesque lump of flesh and screaming agony and extra eyes and toes and stuff as Canada turns up on the bike firing this experimental thing that he's got at,

Sidey: But there'd been this girl who's obviously close to Tetsuo, and she's been following him. Yeah. She keeps seeing news about him and follows him. And at the, the end of it she gets consumed by this thing- Yeah and just squashed, and you see her just get completely

Reegs: Pressed against the glass and- Yeah ... just, like, pre- explodes basically. Bursts, yeah.

Sidey: a nice sequence that.

Reegs: yeah. It's a nice sequence that. Yeah. The, the,

Dan: the, what do you call them? The espers. They're ESP things. They can it's because they can read your mind, and it, 'cause it, I mean, we saw a couple of times where they're you know, they are, they're telepathically kinda communicating with, with people, aren't they?

Reegs: She manipulates Kai and the other one to help get them through the warehouse- Yeah and all that stuff. They

Sidey: warehouse- Yeah ... and all that. They say that they, they will have to enact their plan- Yeah when his powers are at their most extreme. Yeah. And so they- And they're gonna- ... break out

Reegs: Voltron, and they're gonna go, like, three at a time

Sidey: Well, they, That's what I think of that ... one of them just destroys or smashes all the vials of what's left of Akira- Mm. Which creates then a kind of force ghost

Reegs: He sort of Doc Manhattan's himself from Watchmen back together, kind of- Yeah ... in a blinding flash of light. Like, all of the capillaries and stuff reassemble- Yeah ... and suddenly he's there.

Sidey: and suddenly he's there. Naked, I think.

Reegs: I think you're right.

Sidey: And they, he, he go, he then- I, I guess it's a kind of singularity that he creates- Yeah that consumes everything, including Canada.

Reegs: Yeah. In the Wikipedia thing it says, "Oh, Canada, like, sacrifices himself." You're like, "No, he doesn't. He got fucking dragged in by Tetsuo." It's horrible, screaming.

Sidey: And they, the Esps, Espers, whatever they're called, they say that, "Well, we can't survive it, but we can go in and fight against this, or work, you know, within whatever." They don't really, you don't really know what they do. And through the hard way. Yeah. And we should be able to save Canada. Yeah. Which they do. And it-

Reegs: they do, and it- They all end up in the singularity, and he basically experiences loads of passages of

Sidey: it goes 2001 here. Yeah. You do see it was like when they first met, and it So Tetsuo's been like, "You've always had to help me, and I'm tired of it. Blah, blah, blah, I wanna be the boy." And you see that he, he'd been bullied on his first day of school, but so had Canada. Yeah. And he was actually pretty decent to him. He gave him his toy back when they were at school, and you're like, "Well, actually, you're being a bit of a prick, actually." Yeah. And we see various other bits. And it kinda ends in a strange way.

Reegs: Well c- they're sort of all ejected out, aren't they?

Sidey: But is this still N- Neo Tokyo? I don't know.

Cris: Well, it's,

Reegs: Neo Tokyo? I don't know. Well, it's, the, I don't know. I mean, at the end it kinda zooms in again on another singularity- Yeah ... and Tetsuo's

Sidey: am Tetsuo." Yeah. You know, w-

Reegs: Maybe he's become godlike and started his own

Sidey: own universe- That's what I thought. It w- he was like some sort of deity now ... Watchmen

Reegs: deity now ... Watchmen again type vibe. Yeah. And it, I don't know what was going on back in Neo Tokyo because obviously there'd been a horrendous amount of destruction. I think Shikishima is gonna be okay. Colonel Shikishima is gonna be fine, isn't he, and all that, but,

Sidey: that, but, the animation of Tetsuo when he's gone full mutant is, like, pretty incredible.

Reegs: amazing,

Sidey: innit? Yeah. Yeah. Mm.

Reegs: I thought the animation in general was outstanding. I mean, this is a pretty wild movie if you like... But I d- probably for manga,

Sidey: vanilla. I was about to say ... I was probably saying exactly that. Like, they've taken it on to, like, the Nth degree subsequent to this, because- Yeah ... you

Dan: know. I think that's why I enjoyed this one more than I've seen some others because yes, it is plot heavy, and it has all these kind of areas where I had to ... As I say, I, I, I read what was going on with it because there was lots of thing, but I was still enjoying- Yeah The, the different- I suppose cultural viewpoints and, and the way that they, they kind of go about making these films. And also the fact that it just had... seems to have loads of stuff that you think that's been influenced by, you know? Yeah. Like, and loads of,

Reegs: you could literally reel o- like The Matrix clearly heavily influenced- Yeah by this. You know,

Dan: And to be influenced by a cartoon, like- Yeah ... you know, a, an, an anime. And it is, as you say, really kind of clear that even, even a- as you said, you know, the Ryan Gosling character and things like that, just the way that some of the characters stand and ride the bikes and, and go around and, and some of the ideas of what would happen in the future and I, I just thought it was really

Reegs: And some prophetic stuff as well. There was graffiti about, because obviously it is set at the Olympic Stadium, and it says, "Cancel the..." Apparently the Japanese graffiti says, "Cancel the Olympics 2020." Of course, they were canceled, the Japanese Olympics to 2021, weren't they? Right. Yeah. The so weird, nice little prophetic thing there. So this was really decent. I loved it. I really enjoyed it.

Sidey: Yeah, I had a great time watching this. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, I had a great time watching this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would,

Sidey: It's a good gateway, I think. If you ... I- if this anime is something that you were thinking about, this would be a good one to start

Dan: with I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think it is. It's a good, it's a good starter for,

Sidey: some of the more really out there stuff would not be for

Dan: I don't know whether my daughter said

Cris: I

Sidey: I think I could probably get

Reegs: it in. Urotsukidoji, the tentacle stuff.

Sidey: He w-

Dan: Who wa- who watches the, the Crunchyroll and stuff like that, which is stuff that's way more... it seems even way more complex and but I like the, the anime here as well. It wasn't quite Dogtanian, but the... it seemed to have

Sidey: like- Quite. It

Reegs: No. It wasn't quite Dogtanian, no. No.

Dan: wasn't quite Dogtanian, no ... no, no. It, it was it, it seemed to have softer edges, like, you know. I, I don't know, I just enjoyed the that, that side of it, which I don't always on, on these films. But it was all really clear to me

Reegs: like the thing about, although obviously animation techniques do advance and change and all that stuff, you're not limited via imagination technically to do stuff- Mm ... in the same ways that you would've been in 1988- Yeah ... with a camera. So it's so- Yeah ... that influence in it, it's Oh, yeah, you can see why a lot of filmmakers paid homage to this movie.

Sidey: Yeah. It's very cool.

Dan: Chris, did you get round to seeing any

Cris: No, I, I said to Sadie earlier, I couldn't find it on my usual channels- Yeah ... and I, my laptop doesn't work anymore, so I couldn't stream it, and I wasn't gonna watch it on my phone.

Dan: it's not a phone

Cris: of thing. Yeah, yeah, it was just, it would-

Sidey: It was- Don't know if it'd be up bag

Cris: would defeat the purpose, so. It sounds really interesting. It sounds complicated though.

Sidey: It's complicated. They do, like, lots of ... The

Cris: need to be-

Sidey: about-

Reegs: but I don't-- you could just enjoy it- Mm. Yeah ... as a big action movie and enjoy the, the animation and not necessarily hang too

Cris: I don't necessarily hate animation. I really love the

Sidey: I'd just say more on the sci-fi side, 'cause you're not really into sci-fi ... thing. Right.

Cris: I really loved the- You might like it ... the Latvian thing that we did with the cat. Yeah. That was really good. The red turtle, I really loved. So, so there's a few that I really like. I don't ... Hotel Transylvania,

Sidey: There's, Classic. But again,

Cris: it, it's few of them that ... It sounds good though.

Sidey: this other thing that Pete goes on about, and it's called Tetsuo, and he's a dude who, like, has a scar, or a scab, and he picks it and underneath it is metal.

Reegs: All right.

Sidey: And he becomes just more and more metal as the thing goes on, and that sounds like it must have come from this- Yeah ... 'cause the guy's called Tetsuo, and he has ... he comes up with a metal arm, and then- Yeah ... that sounded really fucking twisted.

Cris: That might be the series, no? If you say that that's-

Sidey: could be, yeah. But- You said

Cris: it was based on a series, no? Yeah. Well,

Reegs: a comic. Oh, sorry.

Cris: Oh, sorry. Comic. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

Sidey: But, but I really enjoyed this. It's a strong recommend from me. Yeah. Strong.

Cris: Yeah.

Dan: Recommend.

Cris: Decent

Dan: Go straight in so we can drag it? Mm-hmm.