How Akira and Blade Runner predicted the neon urban ugliness of Tokyo and Hong Kong in 2019

When was the last time you went an hour without looking at your phone? Do you break out in a cold sweat when your social media feed won’t refresh? Are we really in control of these machines, or is it the other way around?

Today’s hyper-connected world of AI, IG, cyberwarfare, drones and mobile phones is exactly the kind of nightmarish dystopia science fiction storytellers dreamt up decades ago – so it’s jolting to realise we have officially arrived in the fabled future of fiction.

Two of the most influential sci-fi visions ever realised are both eerily set in the year 2019: Hollywood’s blockbuster Blade Runner and Japanese animation Akira – two seminal films that might skirt the East/West schism, but both clearly draw their imagined urban environments from Asia’s sprawling mega-cities. Or should that be “meta-cities”?

Produced six years apart, in 1982 and 1988 respectively, but with beguiling parallels in their depiction of an imagined 2019, both films are the jumping-off point for a synapse-firing, new multimedia exhibition at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun.

Set in dystopian future versions of Los Angeles and Tokyo respectively, both films are today recognised among the most prominent examples of “cyberpunk”. While technically defined as a niche sci-fi subgenre, cyberpunk’s hi-tech, low-life aesthetic has today been readily appropriated into pop culture iconography exemplified in the widely-adapted novels of Philip K. Dick and endlessly riffed-on The Matrix movies.

Something about cyberpunk’s runaway, invasive-tech and scarred-planet scenarios clearly chimes with the climate crisis, divisive populism and simmering public revolt of the present day – as evidenced by the success of this year’s blockbuster Alita: Battle Angel, a Hollywood adaptation of the classic 1990s manga, and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 sequel.