I don't speak any Japanese, but I can't imagine that the original dialogue is as breathlessly juvenile and hackneyed as the Americanised English that completely pulls the rug out from under any attempt at character development in Akira, and fragments the movie into one preposterously over-wrought and context-empty confrontation after another. There are some jaw-dropping visual tours-de-force, and the city is consistently affect-less and empty of anyone but helplessly crushed, eviscerated and torched populations. Adults are bumptious pawns; ageless, gnomic infants rule.
Alphaville is a wet, dark, oily place, punctuated with pristine white institutional interiors. The talk is laconic, bone-dry, hard-board; the characters believing so effortlessly in their own unreality that they need no sturm und drang to keep themselves powered. The most intensely present being in the film is undoubtedly the voice of Alpha 60, always answering back and demanding of the increasingly frantic private detective.
The future is harder to believe in, the brighter it gets.
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