Young Thugs, Terrorist Girls and Kids with Scary Powers It’s also the last major manga Otomo created before transitioning to anime.Īnd it all started in Akira: Volume 1! Let’s get back to the story. It also helped build Otomos career as a film director and screenwriter.Īkira helped popularize manga outside Japan, with its ground breaking artwork and themes that resonate even today. The film adaption of Akira was one of the first anime that Western manga fans got to see. It was also one of the first mangas to be translated into English in full, by Marvel Comics defunct Epic Comics imprint (that also brought us Blueberry). Read this classic manga cyberpunk series to find out more… Katsuhiro Otomo: How Akira Brought Manga to The WestĪkira is Katsuhiro Otomo most well-known manga and took 8 years to complete. Kaneda and Tetsuo’s lives will never be the same. Who is the strange boy and why do the anti-government rebels want to get their hands on him? What is Akira and how is it related to the destruction of Tokyo? Then the impossible happens, as an angry Kaneda confronts the strange boy –he disappears right in front of his eyes. The child has the number ‘26’ tattooed and has the wrinkled face of an old man. While Tetsuo Shima, a gang member, races ahead of his rival Kaneda, a child suddenly appears right in front of his motorbike.īut this is no ordinary boy. Riding through the ruins of old Tokyo, Shotaro Kaneda’s biker gang witness a supernatural incidence.

Gangs roam the streets and anti-government rebels commit terrorist attacks from the shadows. In 2030 Neo Tokyo is a futuristic city built on an artificial islands.

The story starts with the event that caused WW3 –the explosion of an unknown weapon of mass destruction that wipes Tokyo off the map. Akira: Volume 1 by Katsuhiro Otomo is set in a world decimated by World War 3.

Akira vol 1 katsuhiro otomo