Analysis Of Katsuhiro Otomo

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Whenever I am asked for an example of good animation I am hard pressed to choose amongst the abundance of my childhood, but should I be asked my favorite in a heartbeat I’ll replay, “AKRIA.” The vivid imagery and blast of color is sure to grab a young child’s attention as it did mine. However, the most notable aspect of this film was the amount of detail and the personality breathed into the characters. The director of AKRIA, Katsuhiro Otomo, and creator of the source manga has created a cult classic that influences many artist and cartoonist today, even having a Simpsons parody of the trailer made. (figure 1) Of course Katsuhiro didn’t appear from thin air.
Born on April 14, 1954 in Tome-gun, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He found a love for the film industry including many American films including Bonnie and Clyde, Easy rider, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. As he observes they all seem to suggest a need to escape to not necessarily to a better life, but a different life. Yet Katsuhiro’s day dreaming eventually hit financial reality and he pursues, while not usually viewed to be a fruitful career, the manga …show more content…

Though Katsuhiro sought to create worlds unlike our own he sought to make them believable, filling them with everyday people, such as students, preforming everyday tasks, i.e. attending school. Outside of the story aspect Katsuhiro sought, and continues to seek, to utilize technology in his film mating. His use of rescoring in AKIRA, while common in America, is a rarity in Japanese animation. This allowed for more liberal expressions and a sense of organic emotion from the voice actors. This technique also allows for a better matching between to voice and animation. Another technology, one really AKRIA pioneered, was the synclavier which could manipulate many sounds on one

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