30-Year-Old Anime Prediction Sparks Talk of Olympic Cancellation

(Bloomberg) -- A scene from an iconic 1988 Japanese animated movie that famously predicted Tokyo would win the right to hold the 2020 Olympics has the country abuzz on Friday over a possible cancellation of the games.

A scene from the movie “Akira,” set in 2019, shows a signboard counting down the days until the Olympics. The sign reads “147 Days Until The Games” and encourages citizens to lend their support to making the event a success. Underneath, someone has graffitied, “Just cancel it!”

With Friday marking exactly 147 days until the opening ceremony on July 24, and talk of the possibility of cancelling the games due to coronavirus growing as the outbreak spreads in Japan, the topic “Just Cancel it!” is trending at the top of Japanese Twitter.

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The cyberpunk animated movie, set in a post-apocalyptic Neo Tokyo, is regarded as one of the most influential anime and science-fiction movies of all time, and has served as inspiration for properties from “The Matrix” to “Stranger Things.”

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