AKIRA, Cut No. 1, Solegraph Edition

TOSHIHARU MIZUTANI (B. 1953)
AKIRA, Cut No. 1, Solegraph Edition
numbered and signed by the artist (lower edge)
solegraph high-grade fine-art print on Radiant White 270 g/m² archival cotton paper
sheet: 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches (100 x 70 cm)
image: 36 1/4 x 20 5/8 inches (92 x 52.5 cm)
original background painted in 1988. this is one of 100 numbered examples. solegraph edition produced by Yamada Photo Process, Toyama, published by Riekeles Gallery in 2022. supplied unframed.

Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA (1988) opens with a single painting, and this is that painting. The image shows Tokyo on 16 July 1988 seen from the air, with the high-rises of Shinjuku at the center, and the film's camera moves in and pans up from the bottom edge of the artwork before the title "1988.7.16 TOKYO" is superimposed at the midpoint — marking both the start of the plot and the date of the film's theatrical release in Japan. Moments later, an explosion of unexplained origin erupts near Mitaka City, and the blast erases the cityscape. Everything that follows in the film — the Neo Tokyo rebuilt on landfill in the bay — grows out of this one destroyed view. The unusual shape and shifting perspective of the artwork are direct consequences of the camera move: during the first half of the shot the camera pans across the background, and around the middle it trucks back so that the field of view widens, which meant the painting had to hold together at every stage of the movement and was calculated rather than composed.

Although it opens the film, this was the last background completed in the entire production. Takashi Watabe prepared the layout, and Toshiharu Mizutani — the film's art director — painted directly onto the layout drawing after time had run out for the usual transfer to background paper, finishing the oversized piece in two and a half days and nights. Remnants of Watabe's pencil lines can still be made out toward the outer areas of the coloured background. This Solegraph edition is produced by Yamada Photo Process in Toyama, published by Riekeles Gallery, and printed 1:1 beside the original painting under matched lighting until the closest possible color match has been reached.