While less heavily worked than that film, the facial animations here are pretty similar to the kind of acting Takashi Nakamura and Otomo were pushing all throughout Akira, and this episode was produced shortly after. Given that no one else was doing this kind of acting throughout the earlier episodes and Okiura is only on this episode I think he is a good guess for this cut. I'll hopefully get to the whole OVA eventually, I just really loved this part.