Ask John: Can You Explain the Ending of Akira?

Question:
I recently purchased the remastered Akira DVD, and I just do not understand the ending, so if you can only…?

SPOILER WARNING!

Answer:
To begin with the ending of Akira, it’s necessary to introduce the beginning. First and foremost, the Akira movie is not actually directly concerned with Akira himself. Akira is the main character of the movie only in the sense that it is his legacy and influence that shapes and influences Neo Tokyo society. Neo Tokyo, in fact, exists because of Akira. In the beginning of the movie, Akira, most powerful of the psychic children, releases his psychic power and evolves from his physical body into a spectral presence or force that lingers over Neo Tokyo. The wake of Akira’s evolution left only pieces of his physical body and sudden, unexpected monumental destruction. This arbitrary, instantaneous chaos is reflected in the chaotic, militaristic, hedonistic and apocalyptic atmosphere of Neo Tokyo society.

The entire Akira movie is a film about evolution and growth. Even the name “Neo Tokyo” itself denotes a “new” futuristic and progressive Tokyo. The psychic children in the movie, Kiyoko, Takashi and Masaru evolve, but in a different way than Akira. Not as powerful as Akira, these children don’t evolve so much as literally age. And Kaneda and Tetsuo both evolve and grow in the film mentally and physically, but again in different ways. Kaneda grows through the film by initially appearing as a rebellious, carefree teen punk. Then he gains adult responsibility as he becomes involved in a political conspiracy and revolution movement. Then he becomes a sort of father figure responsible for the childish tantrum of his younger friend Tetsuo. Tetsuo steadily evolves throughout the film by first appearing as a timid child overshadowed by Kaneda. By the end of the film he has evolved into an aggressive godlike figure overcompensating for his former emotional and physical weakness by taking revenge on society. At the end of the film Tetsuo evolves physically. His psychic power and psychokinetic potential become too large to be contained by his small body, thus he literally mutates and enlarges to capacitate with his rapidly increasing power. In the end of the film Tetsuo, like Akira before him, progresses to a new state of being, higher on a cosmic scale than humanity. He evolves beyond the structure of his limited human body. No longer a single finite human being, Tetsuo becomes a god-like figure by giving birth to an entire universe full of millions of stars and planets.