animation

In the early '90s I read Super Play, a Super Nintendo magazine whose staff were unusually well versed in Japanese culture and the parts of it that bled into gaming: anime, manga. Helen McCarthy’s reporting and Wil Overton’s artwork did a lot of the teaching. That’s how I came to the likes of Akira, Fist of the North Star and Golgo 13 fairly young, and how I knew something about what Akira was supposed to mean before I’d managed to see it.

When I finally got a VHS copy of Akira through a subscription offer, it didn’t change my life. I think I found it hard going. What I couldn’t place at that age was Japan’s post-war relationship with technology, and its recurring critique of the abuse of it: nuclear power and weapons, biotech, the running conclusion that humans make irresponsible stewards. As the only nation to have been hit with nuclear weapons, Japan is uniquely placed to warn against reckless use of dangerous things, and by now that warning has practically settled into its folklore. Like Godzilla before it, Akira is folklore of that kind, which is why it survives the specifics of its plot.

Thirty-odd years on, and that reading is obvious. I’ve caught the film once or twice in between, but only now do I see it whole. It’s more violent than I remembered, though I’m a father these days and softer on that sort of thing. The hand-drawn animation has aged into something remarkable, and a good deal more likeable than the computerised work that’s followed it.

The one place its influence never properly landed is the medium that introduced me to it. Akira never got the game adaptation it deserved: an apparently duff Famicom title that never left Japan, and a Super Famicom version I remember Super Play trailing as in-the-works, which came to nothing. The film shaped Cyberpunk 2077 and the genre around it instead. The magazine got me there; the games it covered never quite followed.

My son’s first Miyazaki, and—with apologies to everyone who’s been telling me for twenty-odd years—mine too. Enjoyed the unhurriedness: no villain, no ticking clock, no third-act lesson, just Chihiro earning her courage by the minute. Watching it with an eight-year-old turned out to be the antidote to arriving at canon late, burdened by other people’s readings. The boy had no readings, just a quiet “wow” at the train across the water. Now we have the rest of the shelf to work through.

Nintendo’s great gift in game design is knowing when to walk away from an idea. A mechanic is introduced, developed, twisted once, then discarded before it outstays its welcome. Some of these ideas—gravity flipping, bee suits, entire physics systems—are things another studio might base a whole game around. To Nintendo, they’re a single level. A philosophy of creative abundance: you can afford to throw away good ideas when you trust yourself to have more.

This does not translate to film. Galaxy is 99 minutes of TikToks, each scene a self-contained vignette stuffed with boss fights, power-ups, and environments from the games, stitched together with the connective tissue of a clip show. The production design is mostly gorgeous. But the introduce-develop-discard rhythm that makes a Mario game feel endlessly inventive makes a Mario movie feel exhausting. A game earns its density through play; a film needs to earn it through narrative. One rewards your attention with agency, the other just demands it.

The movie can’t decide whether it’s for people who’ve played every game or people who’ve played none. Minor characters and references arrive in two flavours: unexplained cameos that flash past like inside jokes at a party you weren’t invited to, or over-narrated introductions that grind the pace to a halt for the benefit of someone’s confused parent. The makers of Super Metroid once said they didn’t want to explain things to the player using too many words. They designed the world so you’d discover things yourself and feel like the discovery was yours. Galaxy never trusts you like that. It either assumes you already know, or it stops to make sure you do. No middle ground, and no discovery.

What it actually resembles is the nostalgia-industrial complex it was born from. Callback upon callback, each reference feeding the next. The cinematic equivalent of a “do you remember this?” Facebook post: you see the thing, you recognise the thing, you feel a brief warmth, you move on. The first movie had plenty of this too, but it largely got away with it—the novelty of seeing these characters on screen carried the weight that the story couldn’t. Galaxy doesn’t have that excuse. With that charm spent, the underlying problem is fully exposed: the film mistakes recognition for emotion, as if reminding you that Lumas exist is the same as making you care about them.

The irony is that Nintendo, in its actual games, resists this. Their whole competitive strategy is refusing incrementalism—competing on terms rivals aren’t even considering. In games, they’re fearless about throwing away what works and trying something new. This movie plays it safe in exactly the way their games don’t. A greatest-hits tour where the songs are played too fast and in the wrong order—and where the thing that made Nintendo interesting in the first place, that willingness to let a great idea go, is the one thing they couldn’t bring themselves to do here.

My son loved it.

Very strange. Pretty good! Best new Pixar film for a while.

Watched on Monday February 23, 2026.

This looks like a PS4 game. One that I would kill to play. As it is, it’s a moving and thoughtful film.

My son liked it. I enjoyed the gypsy jazz part.