The Old School Otaku Lounge

Probably one of the best documentaries on the production of an anime. It used to be fully viewable on YouTube but the full versions have been copyright-claimed by Kadokawa, presumably because the clips of the film trigger it. There are two videos available on YouTube, there' the 18-minute segment with the English dub [here]. And then a Spanish version [here].

There's a very dead torrent for it on Nyaa. eBay has a bunch of LaserDisc and PAL VHS tapes (can't even play those), but the cost would be $50+ here, so that's not happening. When I first was searching for where to view it I completely forgot to check my Blu-Ray copy since that is filled with bonus content, and has the interviews with Katsuhiro Otomo for instance, but no, it doesn't have it. Some special edition versions of the DVD had it, but I don't want to pay $20 for a DVD just for an extra that could end up being lost, or not included, or I got the wrong edition when ordering, etc. And I can't find any torrents that have the bonus content of any of the DVD versions.

Have any of you watched it or own a copy of it? How do you feel about anime documentaries in general? There's this cool YouTube playlist that has a bunch of behind the scenes footage/documentaries for anime including Satoshi Kon's work, Ghibli, Ghost In The Shell, Lensman, etc.

I had the Streamline release of the VHS of this; at some point I copied it to DVD and sold the VHS. For a complex and groundbreaking film like AKIRA, a documentary like this is essential viewing - if my memory serves me correctly, the Production Report was released before the actual film, so it served as a long-form trailer, which had special value selling the movie to American audiences who might not be familiar with the source material.

Now that I think of it, I did come home from the 1988 Worldcon in New Orleans with a copy of the Japanese version of the Production Report, so I have to conclude the Production Report must have made it to home video before the feature film did.

We used some of the footage of Katsuhiro Otomo in one of our Corn Pone Flicks parody films.