Image: tmdb
About This Quiz
With Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympics, we pay tribute to the great anime movie that predicted it so many years ago: Akira. Are you ready to make a big boom? Take this quiz and find out!
When we first see Colonel Shikishima, he comes across like such a toughie. What is he actually like?
It's what he really is, a strict guy
He is a scheming villain
A dad to his men and the Children
Colonel Shikishima may look like a by-the-book soldier, but he's really not. In truth, he takes care of the men under his command, and at the same time, he feels like a father figure, to the other Project Children.
He is a pushover
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When the Project Children harass or try to kill Tetsuo, what do they do?
They destroy his room for real
They make him feel like he is falling forever
Scare him with giant monster toy images
Because the Children are surrounded by toys, they use that imagery when they influence Tetsuo's senses. Their "toy" selves look really, really scary. Calling creepypasta!
They try to make him into a kid like them
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What is one of the reasons why the Akira movie is a cornerstone of film history?
It is a film about psychics
It is a sci-fi movie with biker gangs
It is one of the first dubbed anime movies shown outside of Japan
Akira was one of the first big anime projects, and movies, that crossed over to America. It had an excellent audio dub for the dialogue, and it made people sit up and realize that cartoons and anime could be for older audiences.
It is a story about nuclear weapons
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At the time, with a budget of $8 million, Akira was touted as this.
The longest animation movie
The most violent anime movie
The least successful movie
The most expensive film produced in Japan at that point
Akira's budget of $8 million may seem small to US-based productions, but for Japan, it was the largest budget they'd ever had for a film at that time. The high level of detail and large number of animation stills they used contributed to the relatively expensive cost.
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Kaneda and Colonel Shikishima share this honor in the movie.
The only ones who could save Tetsuo from being a jerk
The only ones who could protect the other Children
The only people to hit Tetsuo using guns
Colonel Shikishima and Kaneda are able to hit Tetsuo for different reasons. With Kaneda, it's probably because Tetsuo thinks Kaneda wouldn't shoot him. With Colonel Shikishima, it's because Tetsuo was too much of a blob monster to care that he was being shot at.
The only ones who would survive the big finale
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Why isn't the movie's namesake, Akira, around for most of the film?
He's asleep
He's in hiding
He's dead
He wasn't in cryogenic storage. Akira was practically a frozen set of organs. Only the sheer psychic powers of the three Children made Akira come back from the dead.
He's in another country
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Why does one of the Children, Masaru, take on a Monster Car Toy image?
He's stuck in a wheelchair
Masaru is the formal one of the Children. He acts more mature, though it's not confirmed if he is. When they operated on him to boost his psychic powers, his ability to walk was affected. In the movie, he goes around in a space-age chair.
He dreams of driving a car one day
He likes diecast car toys
He likes racing contests
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Kiyoko is a powerful psychic, but in real life she is this:
a beautiful teenager
an infant
bedridden
Kiyoko is a somewhat formal little girl, and she seems to be the one who has psychic visions. However, the price for her abilities is that she seems to be generally the weakest, physically.
a hyperactive preteen
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The movie doesn't flinch from showing what in the city scenes with a lot of people?
Nudity
Magic
Mass mind control
Civilian riots
Even though it's a future with a lot of technological and cultural development, social issues are still a problem for the city folk. It's no surprise that all the crazy goings-on in the movie plot of Akira ends up with people rioting all over the place.
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This is probably the most icky and shocking event in the movie, aside from the big boom:
The Children trying to wake Akira
Kaneda tries to kill Tetsuo
Kaori gets squeezed to death inside blob-Tetsuo
Kaori was at the wrong place and time. When Tetsuo loses control, she ends up somewhere inside him. As he kept on expanding, she was crushed into chunky salsa. Yeowtch!
Tetsuo knocking out the military satellite
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In one darkly funny scene, what does one of the rebels try to do to the police station?
vandalize the station's walls
knock a police officer unconscious
blow it up with a grenade
It's a background story in the movie. A rebel tried to use a grenade in the police station. It fizzled out, but later on, the station blows up. The grenade had a delayed timer.
spread leaflets in front of the police station
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Why do the Children exist?
They are supposed to spread a new religion
They were victims of lab accidents
They are loved by Colonel Shikishima
The government wanted psychic super-weapons
The government needed to develop super weapons based on psychic powers. The Children are the weapons themselves, thanks to their abilities. Their abilities come at a heavy price, though.
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What happens to Kaneda's biker gang when they meet with their teachers and school officials?
They are all told nicely to stop being idiots
They are all told that their parents will take them home
They are all kicked out of school
They all get slapped or punched in the face
It looks like Kaneda's gang are on very thin ice when it comes to staying in school. It's not just because they aren't studying, but their criminal records are also getting worse.
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What did Tetsuo do as an extreme method of getting people out of the way in the hospital?
He burns them all to a crisp
He turns them to stone
He uses his psychic powers to rip them to pieces
This is one of the first signs of how powerful Tetsuo's abilities are. He uses his psychic powers to shred three people trying to get him back into a hospital room. Slay!
He teleports them somewhere else
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It all starts with Takashi and this incident:
Takashi wakes Akira up
Takashi goes out to look for a new subject
Tetsuo nearly runs Takashi over with a motorcycle
It isn’t clear if Takashi was being kidnapped, or if he was cooperating. However, when he shielded himself from Tetsuo and the motorcycle, he set off a chain of events that would wake Akira up from his sleep.
Tetsuo befriends Takashi
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What happens to Tetsuo right before the big boom?
He loses control of his powers
Tetsuo has so much power, and so little training, that without the right medicines and emotional balance, he lost control of not only his powers, but also his physical body. He basically turns into a super-psychic blob monster that took up a big part of a stadium.
He turns into a normal person
He loses all his bodily fluids
He becomes older really fast
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What made the Children look so old?
The are just ugly children
The operations and medicines they take
The flashbacks and Testuo's dependence on control drugs show the reason why the Project Children look so old is that the operations they went under and the drugs they need to control their abilities, over time, affected their physical bodies. It's not known how old they are.
The animation makes them look old
They just need more water in their system
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How does Tetsuo no-sell a tank going after him?
He squeezes the tank into a block
He lifts the tank
He flattens the tank
He stops a cannon shell in mid-air
As a display of power, Tetsuo stopped a cannon shell from hitting him, with the power of his mind. Of course, this just lets the riot get further out of hand.
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What is the enemy biker gang known as?
Circus
Freaks
Clowns
One of the most iconic scenes is when Kaneda's biker gang gets into a road fight with the Clowns, a rival group. It also shows that they have a lifestyle that is practically saying "kill or be killed."
Whitefaces
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Tetsuo became the target of this when the government was trying to kill him:
An ICBM missile
A nuclear bomb
A killer satellite
Tetsuo was the target of a killer satellite that destroyed his arm with an energy blast. As revenge, he went up into space and destroyed the whole thing.
A cruise missile
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We know that politics can be really twisted, but what did Minister Nezu do?
He sabotaged the Akira security plans
He was the spy for the rebels
Minister Nezu was the one supplying the rebel forces with information and other things, like hospital IDs. It’s so they can try to kidnap one of the Project Children. Traitor!
He opposed anything that Colonel Shikishima did
He was actually a nice guy
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We don’t see much of Ryu, what was he?
He's a simple office worker in the wrong place and time
He is a mercenary for hire
He's Minister Nezu's loyal executive
He's a top member of the rebel forces
Not much is known about Ryu, but he is apparently a senior member of the rebel forces. He also seems to be close to Kei, but it is not known in the movie what their exact relationship is.
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Aside from someone Kaneda falls for, Kei is also this.
A punk rock singer
A rebel fighter
Kaneda really has a habit for falling into trouble. Even Kei, whom he likes, is a rebel fighter who is part of a group trying to kidnap any of the Project Children or Tetsuo.
An autistic teenager
A poser
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What was originally an animation pencil test became this in the movie:
The Neo Tokyo Explosion
The last black and white "new universe circle" scenes before the credits
The last movie sequence is an abstract animation of circles, making it look like a universe is being born. Akira, Tetsuo, and possibly the other Children, went to another universe, or created one.
The Formation of Akira
Tetsuo's loss of control
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What prevented Kaneda from winning when he and Tetsuo went at each other?
Tetsuo was taking him seriously
He had second thoughts
His weapon's batteries died out
Even though Kaneda seemed to have more than the usual number of batteries for the beam cannon, it was used with a lot of time in between shots. The way Kaneda used it burned out the batteries, or just didn’t allow them enough time to get up to full power.
Kaneda just wanted to hurt Testuo, not kill him
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What element of their pasts do all of the Project Children and Tetsuo have in common?
They are afraid of blood
They are orphans
Tetsuo is an orphan, and from the scenes showing the past of the three Children, they have no parents, either. Even at an early age, they all look like they were in a big laboratory or secret base.
They are all short
They are violent
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Of all the places they could have chosen, where did they hide Akira?
The military base just outside the city
In the underground sewers of the main city area
The Neo-Tokyo 2020 Olympics stadium
If you think about it, hiding Akira under an Olympic stadium is what people would least expect. And as long as he can be kept on ice -- in this case, literally frozen -- then there's no problem.
Under the sea
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Who became a mouthpiece for the Children?
Colonel Shikishima
Kaneda
Kei
It's never explained why, but Kei became the chosen mouthpiece for the Children. They could channel their powers through her, or perhaps they were awakening powers that were natural to her.
Tetsuo
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What did Akira do in the past that makes everybody nervous or treat him like a god?
He talked about salvation
He communicated with everyone in their minds
He could force people to do things for him
He destroyed Tokyo
In the movie, they didn’t know exactly what happened, only that Akira leveled Tokyo with a nuke-like blast. They didn’t say what state he was in after that, but, well, they chopped him up for study, keeping the various bits frozen in a big freezing chamber.
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What little problem made the three Children stop trying to harass or kill Tetsuo in his room?
They couldn't go through with it
They are afraid of seeing blood
It's probably because they really are still children, but Takashi and Kiyoko backed off when they saw Tetsuo's foot bleed after he broke his drinking glass with his foot. Masaru doesn’t seem to be too affected, though.
They didn't have enough power
They actually liked him
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Even if Kei is a rebel fighter, she apparently hasn’t done this.
Distracted the enemy with her sexiness
Stolen important data
Killed another person
Kei froze up a bit after killing a person so she could save Kaneda. It looks like she hasn’t killed anyone at that point, even though she's probably done many more illegal things as a rebel.
Kidnapped someone
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The Doctor has a fitting fate at the end of the movie. What was it?
He is turned into energy
He becomes a psychic
He is stripped of his memories
He is crushed by his own equipment
The doctor was so obsessed with the information he was getting that he didn’t think about his own safety. The van he was in collapsed from the shockwave and stress of what was happening outside. RIP!
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What bonded Tetsuo and Kaneda on their first day in the orphanage?
Kaneda shook hands with Tetsuo
Kaneda talked to Tetsuo
Kaneda got Tetsuo's toy back from some bullies
Kaneda is the bully who fights against other bullies. He didn’t like it when Tetsuo's toy robot was taken away from him, so he fought to get it back until he got a bloody nose. That became the start of a brotherly friendship.
Kaneda and Tetsuo did a pinky promise
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What was always an issue between Kaneda and Tetsuo?
Tetsuo thinks that Kaneda bosses or babies him around too much
You have to look at the scenes closely, but Kaneda really does look out for Tetsuo. Even when Kaneda seems hell-bent on killing him, it is because he sees Tetsuo as his responsibility.
Tetsuo thinks that Kaneda isn’t a friend anymore
Kaneda takes Tetsuo for granted
Kaneda hates Tetsuo, actually
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This is one of the most iconic images from the movie Akira, and it belongs to Kaneda:
Tetsuo's cloak
Kaneda's custom-built motorcycle
Kaneda's big red bike looks totally out of place in the streets of Neo-Tokyo and his biker gang. But it's obviously his most prized material thing.
Takashi's cap
Kiyoko's bed
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You Got:
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