History NightmareFuel / AKIRA

*** “Illusion,” while peaceful, has chanting and music from a Noh play in its second half that gets increasingly frantic, punctuated with startlingly loud gong crashes.

*** “Mutation” takes the cake, runs away with the fork and stabs the baker when it comes to pure terror. Booming, ominous Buddhist chanting and distorted, binaural screaming makes Tetsuo’s already horrifying transformation all the more traumatic.
*** “Requiem” sounds less like a funeral procession and more like the ''end of the fucking world.''

* The scene where Tetsuo and Kaori get cornered by a group of [[JapaneseDelinquents Clowns]] can be pretty hard to watch. Especially the part where one of them rips open her shirt, [[WouldHitAGirl then punches her square in the face]], knocking her out. Which causes her to {{faceplant}} on the ground. Keep in mind, this is a frail looking, terrified, 15 year old girl being both physically and sexually assaulted by guys twice her size. And all of it is played disturbingly straight.

* Tetsuo's psychic powers quickly usurp Joker's position as leader of the Clowns and the drugs used to control his psychic abilities are so ridiculously overpowered that he goes through enough pills and amphetamines to kill a rhinoceros in ''one sitting.''

* Tetsuo's utter lack of human decency is placed front and center stage in the manga, where he has a harem of sex slaves taken from Neo-Tokyo's refugee population and a coterie of psychic bodyguards who [[KlingonPromotion earned their place]] beside him simply by being ''alive'' after consuming pills designed to awaken their latent abilities. And that's not including his natural incompetence as the Great Tokyo Empire's "Prime Minister", allowing famine and anarchy to run rampant through the ruined city. Who would have thought a 15-year-old gangster with an inferiority complex would be so bad at leading a rogue nation?

*** “Illusion,” while peaceful, has chanting and music from a Shinto exorcism ritual in its second half that gets increasingly frantic, punctuated with startlingly loud gong crashes.

* Tetsuo's way of dealing with the hospital personnel in his way is one of the most spine-chilling examples of PowersDoTheFighting -- telekinetically squashing the poor bastards against the corridor walls with such force that they're reduced to '''red paste''', all without lifting so much as a single finger and not even looking while he does it.

* The opening of the movie. It's a long shot of Tokyo that pans out, showing the city on July 16th, 1988. Then, the [[SphereOfDestruction black dome]] appears and vaporizes everything. Millions of people, just going on with their lives like normal, all gone in an instant. And the only sound during all of this is an eerie gust of a wind.

* Tetsuo's way of dispatching hospital personnel - '''splat'''.

***
“Illusion,” while peaceful, has chanting and music from a Shinto exorcism ritual in its second half that gets increasingly frantic, punctuated with startlingly loud gong crashes.
***
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYKOll6G7M Doll's Polyphony]] is in a league of its own. It sounds a lot creepier in the scene that it's played in but the whole unnerving tone of the song makes it also creepy outside of context. The song really starts getting creepier when the older voices join in.
***
“Mutation” takes the cake, runs away with the fork and stabs the baker when it comes to pure terror. Booming, ominous Buddhist chanting and distorted, binaural screaming makes Tetsuo’s already horrifying transformation all the more traumatic.
***
“Requiem” sounds less like a funeral procession and more like the ''end of the fucking world.''

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYKOll6G7M Doll's Polyphony]] is in a league of its own. It sounds a lot creepier in the scene that it's played in but the whole unnerving tone of the song makes it also creepy outside of context. The song really starts getting creepier when the older voices join in.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NpbLMvtEsU Shomyoh]]. Just Shohmyoh. Especially if your not used to listening to Buddhist chanting. Especially the first two minutes of the song where it's basically non rhythmic chanting with creepy ancient percussions in the background. Let's not even get started on the second half of the song. Even people who are used to that kind of chanting can definitely feel terrified as the tone of the song starts to get more and more desperate.

* The realistic portions of the movie are pretty nasty as well. One of Taneda's buddies makes the unfortunate choice of jumping on the front of the Clown's leader's bike. He gets headbutted off and flies under the wheels of the bike. You can hear the nasty sound of his arm shattering to pieces from being run over.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_1qRVdIBs There's the nightmare scene.]] After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. At first, he sees miniature versions of a teddy bear, stuffed bunny and an anthropomorphic car tool crawl onto his bed in an eerily human manner. After they vanish, Tetsuo then sees see all the toys scattered all over the room come together to form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a ravenous, fanged, green reptile for a right hand, a plush rabbit with fangs, and a toy car- who comes out of one of the walls that [[MindScrew breaks apart like lego blocks]], '''all spewing milk''', that try and kill him, [[MindRape while mentally traumatizing him with very surreal imagery.]] [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys The designs of the bear and bunny, specifically, invoke the same creepy feeling of a certain group of equally dangerous animal mascot animatronics that would come years later.]]

** To eleaborate nearly every song in the ost has some form of nightmare fuel in it.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_1qRVdIBs There's the nightmare scene.]] After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. At first, he sees miniature versions of a teddy bear, stuffed bunny and an anthropomorphic car tool crawl onto his bed- [[in an eerily human manner]]. After they vanish, Tetsuo then sees see all the toys scattered all over the room come together to form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a ravenous, fanged, green reptile for a right hand, a plush rabbit with fangs, and a toy car- who comes out of one of the walls that [[MindScrew breaks apart like lego blocks]], '''all spewing milk''', that try and kill him, while [[MindRape while mentally traumatizing him with very surreal imagery.]] [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys The designs of the bear and bunny, specifically, invoke the same creepy feeling of a certain group of equally dangerous animal mascot animatronics that would come years later.]]

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_1qRVdIBs There's the nightmare scene.]] After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. At first, he sees miniature versions of a teddy bear, stuffed bunny and an anthropomorphic car tool crawl onto his bed- [[in an eerily human manner]]. After they vanish, Tetsuo then sees see all the toys scattered all over the room come together to form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a ravenous, fanged, green reptile for a right hand, a plush rabbit with fangs, and a toy car- who comes out of one of the walls that [[MindScrew breaks apart like lego blocks]], '''all spewing milk''', that try and kill him, while [[MindRape while mentally traumatizing him with very surreal imagery.]] [[FiveNightsAtFreddys The designs of the bear and bunny themselves invoke the same creepy feeling of a certain group of equally dangerous animal mascot animatronics that would come years later.]]

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_1qRVdIBs There's the nightmare scene.]] After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. He wakes up to see all the toys scattered all over the room come together to form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a ravenous fanged reptile for a right hand, a plush rabbit with fangs, and a toy car, '''all spewing milk''', that try and kill him. The whole scene looks like something you'd experience in a ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' game, and that was ''before'' the latter was cool, for crying out loud.
** And the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcpFdngLi7Y soundtrack]] that's played....good GOD the [[HellIsThatNoise soundtrack]]!

[[caption-width-right:350:[[FromBadToWorse It]] [[OhCrap gets]] [[UpToEleven worse.]] [[EldritchAbomination MUCH]] [[BodyHorror worse.]] [[https://38.media.tumblr.com/1b856003f30e30de6b27525656e47729/tumblr_mhdb4bkfdP1rlgmm9o1_500.gif Here's the end result.]]]]

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_1qRVdIBs There's the nightmare scene.]] After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. He wakes up to see all the toys come together and form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a monster-like right hand and a milk-spewing toy car that proceed to try to kill him.

* While the anime is pretty famous for its NightmareFuel, the original manga which the anime was adapted from was pretty nightmarish, too. For one, the characters live in a CrapsackWorld where there's lots of people dying left and right in brutal ways, unruly and savage teenagers who run vicious ''bōsōzoku'' gangs, brutal policemen, a shady and corrupt government whose members engage in all sorts of clandestine activities, powerful psychics, and of course an autistic child who was responsible for the destruction of not one city, but two!

* And then there's the mutation scene, where Tetsuo [[SuperpowerMeltdown loses control of his powers]] and [[BodyHorror transforms into a]] [[EldritchAbomination giant human amoeba]] that consumes everything it touches, and we also get to see Kaori get slowly crushed to death in a bloody pulp inside of Tetsuo. The anguished cries of Tetsuo and Kaneda accentuate to the terror. And the [[https://archive.org/details/AKIRAOriginalSoundtrack/Mutation.mp3]] does not help...

* And then there's the mutation scene, where Tetsuo [[SuperpowerMeltdown loses control of his powers]] and [[BodyHorror transforms into a]] [[EldritchAbomination giant human amoeba]] that consumes everything it touches, and we also get to see Kaori get slowly crushed to death in a bloody pulp inside of Tetsuo. The anguished cries of Tetsuo and Kaneda accentuate to the terror. And the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlbxI3eazqk music]] does not help...

** And the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcpFdngLi7Y soundtrack]] that's played....good GOD the soundtrack!

* There's the nightmare scene. After undergoing the experiment, Tetsuo is left to recuperate in what looks like a child's bedroom. He wakes up to see all the toys come together and form some kind of gigantic teddy bear with a monster-like right hand and a milk-spewing toy car that proceed to try to kill him.