They should have just used these guys. It would have been less offensive.

I am making an empirical declaration. There is no way in hell the Akira adaptation isn’t going to completely and utterly blow. Now I know that many of you had already drawn this conclusion for yourself, but for those of you still holding out hope for this to be good, I am here to crush that feeble belief. What has me so riled up (other than the bastardization of one of Japan’s most seminal works)? The plot synopsis (via Bleeding Cool): 

Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel.

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers.

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

Even better is the casting:

Kristen Stewart – Ky
Garret Hedlund – Kaneda
Helena Bonham Carter – Lady Miyako
Ken Watanabe – The Colonel

One Asian? ONE? Whitewashed much? Here’s my question: if you are going to completely change the plot, the location, and the ethnicity of the cast, why would you not change the names of the main characters to something less Asian as well? Better question: Why the hell are you still calling this Akira?

It’s adaptations like this that crush my hopes for things like Death Note and Future Diary. Death Note is about a bored teenager named Light who finds a supernatural book that grants its user the ability to kill anyone whose name and face they know, by writing the name in the notebook while picturing their face. Eventually, it turns into a high caliber battle of wits between Light and L, the greatest detective alive. Future Diary is about a battle royal type contest in which each contestant receives a diary that can predict the future with each diary having unique features that gives them both advantages and disadvantages. Within the next 90 days, the contestants must try to kill each other and survive until there is only one person standing, the winner becoming the new God of Time and Space. When I originally read both Death Note and Future Diary, I was completely enraptured; to this day, they stand with Watchmen and Sandman as some of the greatest and most compelling works of fiction I’ve ever read in my life. While Future Diary isn’t quite high profile enough to get more than the currently airing anime adaptation, there is a live action Death Note in the works. And while I think the concepts in each could easily resonate with an American audience, I honestly don’t want them to touch either property with a ten foot pole at this point. I can go on and on about my thoughts on this, but I think Mr. George Takei said it best in this excerpt from an interview with Advocate.com:

[Akira] originated in Japan, and, of course, it has a huge Asian fan following. But it’s the multi-ethnic Americans who are fans of Akira and manga. The idea of buying the rights to do that and in fact change it seems rather pointless. If they’re going to do that, why don’t they do something original, because what they do is offend Asians, number 1; number 2, they offend the fans. The same thing happened with M. Night Shyamalan. He cast his project [The Last Airbender] with non-Asians and it’s an Asian story, and the film flopped. I should think that they would learn from that, but I guess big studios go by rote, and the tradition in Hollywood has always been to buy a project, change it completely and flop with it. I think it’s pointless, so I thought I would save Warner Bros. a bit of failure by warning them of what will most likely happen if they continue in that vein.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

[Editor's Note: It still won't be as bad as The Spirit. -Will]