Akira’s Animators Over the Past Decade [Sakuga Compilation]

1988’s Akira is among the most revered and influential anime films of all time, and is today regarded almost as a symbol of a certain time and place in anime history, both stylistically and in terms of overall quality. To this day, it remains one of the most impressive animation showcases to ever come out of Japan, and a lot of its animation staff went on to have long and illustrious careers within the industry.

Given Akira’s iconic status when talking about classic anime, I thought it might be interesting to find out what the animators who worked on that film have been up to over the past decade. I got the idea for this after discovering that some of the most iconic scenes from the first season of K-On–a series which is often used to represnt the modern age of anime in the same way that Akira represents late 80s–were animated by someone who also drew some very memorable cuts from Akira.

From there, I had a look at all of the animators listed for Akira on sakugabooru and compiled all of their work from the past decade into a thirty-three-minute sakuga AMV. It was pretty fascinating to see how many of these staff would continue to find themselves working together over the years, with a lot of them having done work for Ghibli through the 90s and 2000s, and many also contributing to the films of Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, Hiroyuki Okiura, and Mamoru Hosoda, and also going on to contribute to various parts of the Animator Expo. At some point, it almost became more interesting to find out which stuff these animators had worked on outside of those films, and the random places in which some of them turned up.

In the video, the animators are mostly organized by their level of cotnribution to the film Akira itself, in terms of how much of their work on the film was listed on sakugabooru. Besides that, each individual animator’s work is ordered chronologically. If you’re down to check out this behemoth-sized sakuga AMV, then head on down below and follow the links to all the places where the video is currently being hosted. This video is completely non-profit and was made just for the sake of its own existence, so if you want to download it and upload it to other streaming sites, then feel free to do so, and link them to me so I can put them in my list. Enjoy!

(Note: Maybe don’t watch this at work. There’s some tits.)

On google drive.

On Free Playing.

On Zippcast.