In the fall of 1994, the Internet was new, no one had cell phones, and we watched movies on VHS tapes at home. Blockbuster Video was the only rental store in town, and they only stocked the most popular movies.
This created an underground market for genre films taped from television or copied from other, less than legal sources. Tapes were traded from person to person. Remember, the Internet as we know it was more than 10 years in the future.
Japanese animation fell into this fan-traded system. True, most Blockbusters had a “Japanimation” section, but it was small and but the titles were often family friendly. If you have any knowledge of anime, then you know much of it is not okay for kids. This meant Blockbuster was a poor source of Japanese animation in the early 90s, and yet, it was one of the only legal, reliable sources.
Thus is was that in the fall of 1994, I came to be watching a home copied (bootleg) version of the 1988 movie AKIRA in the common room of my high school dorm. I was a junior at Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a public boarding school for the gifted. I had seen some Japanese animation before, but it had been edited for kids: Robotech, Voltron, Speed Racer, and Tranzor Z for example.
AKIRA was something new. In the first ten minutes there’s a biker gang fight and machine gun fire shreds a man. The material that follows is no gentler. There’s gore and violence and cursing and nudity and a highly complicated, difficult to follow plot. And there was one more thing that really surprised me. They talked about god.
Note the lower case “g.” They did not discuss god in Christian terms. There was no mention of Jesus, and there were no crosses, Bibles, churches, or clergy. But still, they talked about god! Specifically, the characters talked about god’s power. One group wanted to control that power, while another opposed the group that was making the attempt. There’s a lot more to the plot: there are little green kid-adults who can blow up stuff with their minds. There are revolutionaries set on overthrowing the government. There are corrupt politicians. There’s an assortment of delinquent teenagers causing trouble. And there’s a gruff military leader who may have the city’s best interest at heart. The plot’s complicated. What you need to know is that at the heart of it all, there’s a running discussion about godhood, divinity, and humanity’s desire for transcendent power.
In 1994 I was marginally Christian. I had been raised Protestant, and I was roughly 22 years away from being received into the Catholic Church. I was very curious about Christianity and God. The problem was that no one wanted to talk about Him in an authentic manner. The Christian movies and books that I’d seen focused on teaching doctrine. They didn’t stray from the accepted talking points or entertain the possibility that God might not conform to their particular protestant confession. To 17 year old me, AKIRA did what they wouldn’t. AKIRA showed a divinity engaged in a real, messy world, and it showed characters making life-changing decisions. It didn’t hurt that AKIRA’s main character was a resentful teenager, or that he takes revenge on the world in the second half of the film.
AKIRA’s two plus hour run was stuffed full of raw emotion and visceral, bloody action. It was also full of supernatural events that the characters accept at face value. Example: At one point a ghostly girl appears and another character walks on water to reach her. There was no debate about how this couldn’t happen because humans don’t have this kind of power, only Jesus does. And there was no explanation about how any of the other events (and there were many) harmonized with and illustrated proper interpretation of Scripture. They just happened, and the characters rolled with it.
AKIRA culminates in a battle in a stadium. The previously mentioned teenager, who has been given the power of a god, loses control of those powers. And that’s when the truly wonderful moment comes. A group of characters gather to pray…and god answers. As noted earlier, it’s not the Christian understanding of god. But it’s a god nonetheless, and it responds to the crisis. At the last possible moment it prevents a cataclysmic explosion, and heals Tetsuo, the teenage main character. In other words, when all appears lost, the god acts to heal the pain.
Today, at 41 I see a parallel between this ending and the Passion narrative in the Gospels. We’ve heard the Passion so often that it’s lost it power. Imagine how it must have been in context! The disciples are scattered. Jesus is tried in a rigged court and executed by crucifixion. Everything is lost. God is defeated. Corruption and injustice won. There’s nothing left to do but sit on the ground and wait for death. But then…God shows up. True, we now know that He was always there. But in the moments after the crucifixion, no one knew what was coming. Imagine the joy when they saw their Lord and Savior in the flesh, alive and vibrant. Death itself had been defeated! God had not abandoned them, and had in fact provided for this very moment from the beginning of all creation. He accomplished all this in the midst of a very dirty and complicated reality.
And we often lose sight of how dirty and messy the Gospels are. Jesus didn’t go to the clean and neat. He hung out with the poor, the sick, and the needy. He became flesh and dwelt among us. Not around us. Not near us. With us. The Gospels contain gore, violence, and nudity. It’s not in the text but there was probably some cursing, too.
God entered into this messy, imperfect world to redeem us. He continues to do so. It’s a wonderful, beautiful, messy, and dirty process. God loves us. AKIRA gave me another perspective on what that love might mean. The film showed me just how messy God might get, and that He could show up in unexpected ways. It also showed me that others really do believe in god, that it’s not all an elaborate joke. True, AKIRA doesn’t describe god in Christian terms, and its characters certainly don’t behave in ways anyone should emulate. But God did use it to reach one cynical, angry teenager. And for that, I am thankful.
*Editor’s Note: Akira (1988) is rated R for graphic violence and brief nudity.
Michael Bertrand
Michael served as a priest in the Episcopal church for 11 years. He and his family were received into full communion with Catholicism in 2016. He currently works nights at an 30 day Alcohol and Other Drugs (AoDA) rehabilitation clinic in Monona, Wisconsin.