Akira/Characters

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Shotaro Kaneda

• Affectionate Pickpocket
• Badass Normal
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's a total pervert to Kei at the start, but later grows fond of her.
• Delinquents
• Determinator
• Hey, It's That Voice!: In the Streamline dub, Cam Clarke plays Kaneda; in the Animaze dub, Johnny Yong Bosch takes over the role.
• Last-Name Basis: Though in Japan, it's common for the last name of people placed before their name.
• Mitsuo Iwata
• No One Should Survive That: Kaneda is by far the luckiest character in the story line.
  • In fact, it could be argued that he didn't survive the obliteration of Neo Tokyo and only pulled through because of an odd application of the Timey-Wimey Ball.

Tetsuo Shima

• Ax Crazy: Moreso in the manga, where he simply kills people because he feels like it.
• Badass Abnormal: After discovering his powers.
• Big Bad: While Tetsuo starts off just as confused as everybody else, he becomes the main antagonist eventually.
• Evil Laugh: "UWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-A-AAH"!
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the movie. Much of Tetsuo's rampage has him doing nothing but smirking and deflecting any hits against him in stride, but when the army starts pulling out their laser guns and shooting at him, they miss and hit one of the Akira worshippers following him. His reaction to it was of shock and disgust. The next time they fire he shields not only himself from the beams, but also deflects them away from any bystanders behind him. It becomes somewhat inverted, when he breaks the bridge, but hey, that was a combination of him not knowing his own strength as well as one of the collapsing tanks misfiring and hitting the side where the worshippers were standing.
• Freudian Excuse: Poor Tetsuo had to deal with bullies of various sorts his entire life until he discovered his powers.
• From Nobody to Nightmare
• Gone Horribly Right: The military succeeded only too well in unlocking Tetsuo's powers.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Tetsuo in the 2001 redub is voiced by Joshua Seth, who most American anime fans know as the voice of freaking Tai from Digimon. On the video game side of things, Josh Seth is more commonly known for voicing chaos from Xenosaga. Notable, because the range between the two characters are very different, making it difficult for fans to see a connection if they hadn't known it already.
• Humanoid Abomination: At the end.
• Japanese Delinquents
• Lima Syndrome: In the manga, Tetsuo comes to feel some degree of sympathy for Kaori, even letting her take a nap with her head on his lap.
• Nozomu Sasaki
• Out of the Inferno: Right before he starts fighting the military in the movie.
• Parental Abandonment
• Person of Mass Destruction
• Shadow Dictator: Akira is made out to be the ruler of the empire in the manga, but Tetsuo is really the one "ruling."
• Shrinking Violet: Tetsuo was very introverted as a child.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Tetsuo after the third book. Just replace magic with psychic powers.
• Spikes of Villainy: Tetsuo's hair.
• Superpower Meltdown
• Tank Ammo Catch: Tetsuo does this with his mind in the movie.
• Took a Level In Badass: Thanks to his newly awakened powers!
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Naturally.

Kei

• Action Girl
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Kei in the Animaze (2001) dub was voiced by Wendee Lee. She's had quite a large amount of animé roles, herself, including Faye Valentine and Haruhi Suzumiya.
  • Her original seiyuu is the very famous Mami Koyama
• Extraordinarily Empowered Girl
• Plucky Girl

Colonel Shikishima

• Colonel Badass
• Friend to All Children: He's the only one aside from Dr. Onishi to take the Espers abilities seriously and is fiercely protective of them. Even willing to take on a mutating Tetsuo with nothing but a side arm just to keep him away from them. He extends this to Kaori as well in the movie when Tetsuo advances on her menacingly, making him the only one aside from Kaneda to manage to harm Tetsuo. He was even genuinely worried when Tetsuo's powers were getting out of control, desperately trying to warn him that his powers are killing him.
• Took a Level In Badass: The Colonel, after the timeskip in the manga. Before, he's a very angry Elite Mook who spends his whole time shouting conflicting orders. After, he's a much more thoughtful and outright heroic character who shows that he's a very badass fighter who's not to be messed with as time goes on, leading up to him attempting to take out Tetsuo head on.

Akira

• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence The big explosion that left that massive crater was caused by him ascending into an energy form. E=mc^2 and all that.
• Creepy Child
• Dead All Along / Posthumous Character: By thirty years in the movie. Subsequent resurrections notwithstanding.
• Gone Horribly Right
• Humanoid Abomination
• Human Popsicle
• Person of Mass Destruction
• Schrodinger's Cast: Alive throughout the manga, but Dead All Along in the movie (though he gets better.)
• Sealed Evil in a Can
• Why Am I Ticking?
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds

Kyoko, Takashi and Masaru

• Apologetic Attacker: Takashi uses his Psychic Powers to pretty much blow up a girl named Mozu, but it's clear that he saw it as the only alternative and apologizes before and after doing so.
• Creepy Child
• Ill Girl: Kyoko is bedridden and has a weaker health than the others. Masaru is confined to a wheelchair
• Never Grew Up
• Sacrificial Lion: Takashi, who gets shot in the head by no real reason at all. And right when he had found Akira and was happily going to him! This completely causes an horrified Akira to release his powers, taking almost all of Neo Tokyo with him.

Kaori

• Break the Cutie
• Butt Monkey: A tragic example in the movie. She is, constantly belittled by Tetsuo, beaten and nearly raped by The Clowns after her first appearance. Then killed accidentally when Tetsuo's mutation devours her and crushes her to death. To make matters even worse he can feel her physical and emotional pain from it even after her death.
• Love Martyr
• Morality Chain: In the manga, she's one of the few persons Tetsuo cares for. When she died, he went APESHIT.
• Stockholm Syndrome: In the manga, Kaori comes to feel sympathy towards Tetsuo, despite the fact he forcibly recruited her and tried to turn her into a sex slave.
• Yuriko Fuchizaki

Lady Miyako

• Big Good
• Blind Seer
• Demoted to Extra: In the film
• Team Mom

Sakaki, Mozu and Miki

• Blondes Are Evil: Toyed with in regards to the blonde Mozu. She's not exactly evil, but very ruthless. So much that she won't stop attacking Takashi, causing him to release his powers and kill her in self-defense.
• Creepy Child
• Extraordinarily Empowered Girl
• Tyke Bomb
• Short Hair with Tail
• Undying Loyalty: The three girls are totally devoted to their leaderess, Miyako

Chiyoko

• Badass
• Brawn Hilda
• Mama Bear

Joker

• Genius Bruiser

Nezu

• Meaningful Name
• Smug Snake

Tetsuo's handyman

• Japanese Delinquents
• Jerkass
• No Name Given
• Smug Snake
• Too Dumb to Live: Shooting Kaori to death in front of Tetsuo, while fully knowing that she's his Morality Chain? You're dead, man, DEAD.

Kaisuke aka Kai

• Action Survivor
• Japanese Delinquents
• Takeshi Kusao