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Watch The Simpsons fuse with Akira in the first Bartkira trailer

Watch The Simpsons fuse with Akira in the first Bartkira trailer

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The Simpsons and Akira are just about the world's most influential works of animation. They're very different in tone — one a show about a loving, dysfunctional family, one a movie about a rampaging and remorseful blob — but that hasn't stopped a set of animators smashing them together in a new mash-up trailer for "Bartkira." The parody trailer apes the original Akira trailer perfectly, replacing the anime movie's motorcycles with skateboards, its Neo-Tokyo with Neo-Springfield, and its tragic Tetsuo with the similarly tragic Milhouse.

The parody's creators have built up a back story for the supposed Bartkira movie. Apparently discovered on the VHS tape for the "Do The Bartman" music video, the trailer is the result of a collaboration between Fox and Japanese production company Toho, an early-'90s effort to appeal to American consumers "without having to spend a lot of money." Of course, this isn't true — the trailer is actually based on an idea by artist Ryan Humphrey that was later fleshed out by cartoonist James Harvey. Together with hundreds of other artists, they've also drawn three entire volumes of manga that you can read now, using The Simpsons' stars to act as Akira's characters as part of the long-running Bartkira project.