10 Best Apocalypse Movies

Akira transports viewers to a dystopian Neo-Tokyo in the far flung future of 2019 through the visual flair of Japanese animation. Neo-Tokyo is a cyberpunk fantasy, a thriving, vast metropolis built to rebuild the original city wiped out by a colossal explosion, one that is dominated by anti-government sentiment, terrorism, and teeters on the brink of social collapse.

What follows is a science fiction mainstay, involving government conspiracies, extrasensory powers, secret task forces, corrupt politicians and violent action aplenty. Paired up with a soundtrack drawing on traditional Indonesian and Japanese musical traditions to create a percussive, prescient soundscape that's punctuated only by shouts, crunching violence and screeching tyres.

Thanks to its hyperstylized presentation, this animated film is at points both beautiful and strikingly violent, bloody, but is also full of life, thrumming with pure kinetic energy and helped to popularise anime movies outside of Japan. Despite diverging significantly from the original manga, Akira is a fascinating film that will grip you from start to finish. It's very easy to see how Akira impacted pop culture across the board upon its release worldwide.