The ILIAD of Neo-Tokyo: The Archetype of the Friend's Death in AKIRA

Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark animé Akira (1987) isn't the state of the art anymore. Twenty years after it was hailed as a monument in Japanese animation, it shows its age. So why is Akira still the best animé I've ever seen? Because regardless of how visually gripping the film is (and it still is), its enduring power lies in its story, crucially in the friendship between teen gang members Kaneda and Tetsuo, whose trials reenact the age-old archetype of the best friend lost to death.

Joseph Campbell defines archetypes as "elementary ideas, what could be called 'ground' ideas" (60). He goes on to explain, "All over the world and at different times of human history, these archetypes, or elementary ideas, have appeared in different costumes. The differences in costumes are the results of environment and historical conditions" (60-61). Just as Akira tells of the friendship of Kaneda and Tetsuo, ancient Sumeria tells of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Homeric Greece of Achilles and Patroclus, the movie Beaches of CC and Hillary. Each story is different, but each recounts the ways in which the death of a best friend transforms the survivor.

Literary critic Northrop Frye addresses some of the "environment and historical" differences in representations of the same archetype by categorizing narratives according to "mode," including "mythic," "epic," "romance," etc. Homer's Iliad is a friendship story in the epic mode. Though Frye seldom addresses science fiction, I'm tempted to describe Akira as naturalistic in mode: it presents psychologically realistic characters, with an emphasis on the darker side of life.¹ While there's nothing absolute about these categories, they help distinguish different treatments of similar themes. I'll refer to these "modes" to compare Akira and the Iliad, two narratives that share a number of characteristics even beyond broad archetypal echoes.

The Iliad takes place during the Trojan War but, unlike its film adaptation Troy, addresses only the handful of days concerning the "wrath of Achilles." Achilles, the Greeks' greatest warrior, is angry that Agamemnon has stolen his slave woman, so he withdraws from the war to "sulk in his tent." When the Trojans are on the point of victory, however, he agrees to help the Greeks by letting his best friend Patroclus lead his army into battle disguised as Achilles. Patroclus initially trounces the Trojans but, pressing his advantage too far, is killed by Hector. In a fit of rage and grief, Achilles reenters the battle and kills Hector, then dishonorably denies him proper funeral rites, none of which lessens his pain at his friend's death. Finally, when Hector's father, King Priam, pleads with Achilles to return his son's body, Achilles is moved, gives the body to Priam, and begins to come to terms with Patroclus's death.

Akira, likewise, depicts a "great warrior's" experience of the death of his best friend. Twenty-first century Neo-Tokyo is in jeopardy when a deadly science experiment resurrects the power of Akira, a force that destroyed Tokyo three decades before. Tetsuo, the runt of Kaneda's biker gang, is captured and surgically altered to channel the power of Akira. Drunk on his new power and fueled by old resentments, he almost destroys Neo-Tokyo. Kaneda, who initially risks life and limb to rescue him, soon becomes his adversary, and the two attempt to kill each other. But when Tetsuo's power slips out of his control, transforming him into a mass of pulsating flesh and energy, the rivalry vanishes. Tetsuo cries, "Kaneda, help me!" but then warns him to run, to save himself. Kaneda, however, does not run away but is absorbed into the energy field surrounding Tetsuo and the other Akira test subjects. There, he is immersed in Tetsuo's memories of their friendship, memories of Kaneda's guidance, support, and companionship. With help from another friend, Kaneda escapes the effect that transports Tetsuo and Akira into some other "universe." He is left with a spark of energy he clasps in his hands in memory of his friend, a sign that he has learned the true value of a friendship he had often taken for granted.

The friendships presented in these two stories differ significantly. While Kaneda and Tetsuo's relationship swings from companionship to rage to self-sacrifice and love, Achilles and Patroclus are never in serious conflict. As epic heroes, they exist in a world described by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin as "beyond the sphere of possible contact with the developing, incomplete and therefore re-thinking and re-evaluating present" (17). In an epic, Bakhtin argues, characters are static, their identities and relationships fixed. Patroclus, a prince exiled in boyhood from his own kingdom, is fostered by Achilles's father and becomes Achilles's lifelong friend. Patroclus's father sums up their proper, unalterable relationship:

Achilles is nobler than you with his immortal blood
but you are older. He has more power than you, by far,
but give him sound advice, guide him, even in battle.
Achilles will listen to you--for his own good. (IL. 11.939-42)

Though subordinate to Achilles in both physical prowess and social station, Patroclus is Achilles's honored counselor. His privileged place in Achilles's household is assured; neither questions his role in the other's life.

Kaneda and Tetsuo, in contrast, enact the confusion and instability of psychologically realistic experience, what Bakhtin describes as "an indeterminacy, a certain semantic openendedness, a living contact with unfinished, still-evolving, contemporary reality (the openended present)" (7). Their relationship is less codified; it shifts according to their circumstances and feelings. Tetsuo and Kaneda become friends as children, Kaneda the spindly Tetsuo's protector. By the time they're teens, Tetsuo struggles to prove that he can carry his weight in gang warfare. Unlike Patroclus, he has no obvious role that validates his importance to Kaneda. He is most likely accepted in Kaneda's gang only because he's Kaneda's friend, and Kaneda continually mocks him for his weakness. Unsurprisingly, when Tetsuo acquires "superpowers," he laughs at Kaneda and asserts gloatingly, "I won't be needing you to save me anymore. From now on, I'll be saving you" (Akira). Later, when the two are locked in mortal combat, he voices a festering resentment: "You've been telling me what to do ever since we were kids" (Akira). Their friendship is marked by ambivalence, inequality, and frustration but just as surely by loyalty, caring, and sometimes plain fun. It is implied that Tetsuo and Kaneda are each other's oldest friends, the truest "family" either can claim.

In both the Iliad and Akira, the core friendships endure as ultimately undeniable facts of life. The love that underlies them may be strained, but even in the face of death, it remains a permanent presence in the survivor's life. Of course, both stories are about more than these friendships. Otomo says of the themes of Akira, "[I]f I said I wanted to tell the story of Kaneda and Tetsuo's friendship, I feel like that doesn't really do it justice. It's more than that. Lots of things are in it" (Akira Production).² The Iliad, likewise, is multifaceted, yet even these different facets bring out similarities between the two friendship narratives. Both stories are set amid misery: the Iliad in the ninth year of the brutal Trojan War, Akira in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Both, thus, depict characters who must survive literally by fighting, whether as epic heroes or street punks. Both explore great physical power: Achilles's demigod prowess, the power of Akira, Kaneda's biker skills. Both show the uselessness of deploying such power for revenge: Achilles cannot heal the hurt of Patroclus's death through slaughter; Tetsuo kills (minimally) hundreds to no purpose, while Kaneda's enraged attempts to kill him help no one. In both stories, societal violence and personal failings finally rob lifelong friends of each other. Yet in both stories, the love survives the tragedy. Across the millennia and around the globe, the power of friendship remains a constant in a troubled world.

Notes

¹ Literary and cultural critic Raymond Williams explains that 19th century literary "naturalism" was concerned with "describing and interpreting human behaviour in strictly NATURAL terms," i.e. in terms of human nature (217, emphasis original). The perceived tendency of the movement to dwell on the "baser" aspects of human life caused it to be associated lurid or grotesque narratives. In Frye's modes, naturalism, like realism, is included in the "low mimetic."

² Though Otomo is emphatic—and correct—that Akira cannot be reduced to a single theme, the fact that the first theme he mentions is Kaneda and Tetsuo's friendship highlights that theme's importance. Interestingly, Otomo lists among his early influences the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, another classic tale of male-male friendship (Otomo).

Works Cited

Akira: The Special Edition. Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo. DVD. Pioneer, 2001. (Quotes are taken from the English subtitles.)

"Akira Production Report." Akira: The Special Edition. Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo. DVD. Pioneer, 2001. (Quotes from subtitles.)

Bakhtin, M. M. "Epic and Novel." The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002. 3-40.

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Ed. Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988.

Frye, Northrop. 1957. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1973.

The Iliad by Homer. Trans. Robert Fagels. Introd. and notes. Bernard Knox. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1990.

Otomo, Katsuhiro. "Interview of Director Katsuhiro Otomo." Akira: The Special Edition. Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo. DVD. Pioneer, 2001. (Quotes from subtitles.)

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.