Akira: parents' guide

Graphic and sustained: biker brawls, riots, shootings and people crushed under rubble, with lots of blood and lingering injury detail. A main character's arm is blasted off, dogs are shot, and a gang grabs a young woman and tries to sexually assault her.

Mostly words like 's--t,' 'bitch,' 'son of a bitch,' 'a--hole,' 'bastard,' 'goddamn' and 'damn,' but the BBFC reports infrequent f-words in recent releases, including the English dub. Wording differs between the two English dubs and the subtitles.

During the attempted assault, a gang member rips open a young woman's top and her bare breasts are shown. There is some kissing and groping, not all of it wanted, but no sex scene.

Drug use is shown briefly: members of the teen biker gang, the Capsules, hand out and swallow unidentified pills with strange effects, and in one translation a user is said to look 'like a crack head.' Characters also drink in a bar and smoke.

Increasingly nightmarish: hallucinations of giant toys attacking, children with aged faces and eerie powers, and a finale in which a body swells into a monstrous mass that swallows people. Tetsuo's agony and the city's destruction are intense.