Akira is one of those anime I love to say I don't like despite revisiting it all the time because of its gorgeous attention to detail. That honor to the medium that is first and foremost audiovisual, with every scene being utterly cinematic, glorifying motion to degrees unseen until decades later. Even stuff like Do You Remember Love from beloved Macross franchise can't touch this visually.
All that made me realize that I actually like the film, but I gotta say, if you approach this expecting a well written coherent script, you're fucked. It's garbage ok. Inevitably garbage since it's more compressed than a chubby in one of those pressing machines from gym, I hate those. That is not a big of a problem since it delivers so strongly on other fronts, mainly presentation, but some people didn't get over the fact Akira just couldn't work as a 2 hours movie. It also wouldn't be nearly as beautiful as it is if it were a series encompassing the manga's entirety, so yeah, it's a no win situation, for some. For me, it's whatever. What happened happened, so I enjoy its visuals and don't give a damn.
There is a philosophy to Akira, explicited in the making of by the man himself, Otomo. He says that in animation everything should move, all the time, because it's life they are animating. That is one thing you rarely see, a piece of animation where in every god damn scene things are moving. The only examples I can come up with are Ponyo from Miyazaki and Redline from Koike, both traditionalists who believe in the power of hand drawn 2D animation above anything else. Basically there are two ways of watching this: you can watch the foreground of everything, what supposedly matters, or you can watch what is behind that. Pay attention to details such as falling glass, breaking walls, force fields, flames, bullets, weight illusion, mechanical design, lightning's timing, lips sync that is the best you can get in the medium as far as I'm concerned, unusual usage of colors for a cyberpunk oriented movie (they created like tons of new colors just to get done with this shit), as well as sheer creativity which is undeniably memorable even for those who despise the film. If you claim the transformation scene is disgustingly gross, it worked. If you are like me and gets all like 'dude what the actual fuck is happening that shit is ugly as fuck' while smiling, well, it worked too.
Anyway, I think it's a pretty fun watch. Lots of shit happens, characters are mostly like fun to watch. Kaneda is a cool psycho kid and his chemestry with the lady is entertaining. It's not like they get fleshed out or anything, but at least they aren't fucking robots. Imagine watching robots doing nonsense, now that is insufferable. The insanely fluid animation made the characters organic enough that despite not liking their personalities, it's like watching real people (for the most part). Colonel is boring, but if you can withstand him you will be fine. If you end up frustrated, disappointed and shit, well, just remember: it's ok to dislike dumb shit. Just like it's ok to like dumb shit. It can be fun, it's just a matter of not giving much of a fuck and over time you might become like me, eerliy attracted to its presentation and animation cause why not? 
