For some time, Kodansha had been repeatedly asking Otomo to create a series for their new manga magazine Young Magazine, but he was busy with other work for another publisher and turned them down. After finishing Farewell to Weapons (1981) for Young Magazine, he started thinking of a new project. At his first meeting with the publisher, Otomo proposed for Akira to be a relatively short work of about ten chapters "or something like that," as Otomo said he was "really not" expecting it to be a success. Fireball anticipated a number of plot elements of Akira, with its story of young freedom fighters trying to rescue one of the group's older brother who was being used by the government in psychic experiments, with the older brother eventually unleashing a destructive "fireball" of energy. Due to a lack of planning, Otomo had to hastily end Fireball without the finale he wanted; he later stated, "You could say that Akira was born from the frustration I had about that at the time." Author Mark Schilling's The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture mentions that Otomo also cited the influence of the 1977 live-action film Star Wars on Akira. Both properties feature cinematic ambition and mythic-scale science fiction.

Mitsuteru Yokoyama's manga series Tetsujin 28-go (1956–1966) had particular influence on Akira, as Otomo wanted to pay homage to the children's manga.

With Akira, Otomo's most ambitious work to date, he wanted to evoke the later Shōwa era, including preparations for the Olympic Games, the country's rapid economic growth, and the student protests of the 1960s. "I wanted to recreate the assorted elements that built this era and craft an exciting story that would seem believable enough in reality." Mark Schilling reported that Otomo has also cited influence from the 1977 live-action film Star Wars on his series.

Development

With Akira, Otomo wanted to "dig deeper into [his] issues" with speed and flow, telling a story with as few words as possible, "edit it to gain that sense of speed and make people read it faster, and at the same time make them stop cold at the important scenes."

The image model for the character Akira was Shōryū from Saiyūki (1960). Otomo liked his sorrowful expression and used him as a reference after deciding to make Akira a child.

Otomo was meticulous in creating the collected volumes of Akira, often leading to them being released late.

Susan J. Napier identified this morphing and metamorphosis as a factor that marks the work as postmodern: "a genre which suggests that identity is in constant fluctuation." She also sees the work as an attack on the Japanese establishment, arguing that Otomo satirizes aspects of Japanese culture: in particular, schooling and the rush for new technology. Akiras central image of characters aimlessly roaming the streets on motorbikes is seen to represent the futility of the quest for self-knowledge. The work also focuses on loss, with all characters in some form orphaned and having no sense of history. The landscapes depicted are ruinous, with old Tokyo represented only by a dark crater. The nihilistic nature of the work is felt by Napier to tie into a wider theme of pessimism present in Japanese fantasy literature of the 1980s.

According to Dolores P. Martinez, the serial nature of the work influenced the storyline structure, allowing for numerous sub-plots, a large cast, and an extended middle sequence. This allowed for a focus on destructive imagery and afforded Otomo the chance to portray a strong sense of movement. Shimizu said that Kodansha had received offers from many other publishers, including the newly established Viz Media, but Otomo chose Goodwin because he was really close to French artists that Otomo was a fan of. Otomo sent Oliff illustrations that he colored with markers as samples. Coloring lasted from 1988 to 1994, being delayed by Otomo's work on Steamboy.

Akira began being published in the American comic book format in the United States in 1988 by Epic Comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics.

The English-language rights to Akira are currently held by Kodansha Comics, who re-released the manga from 2009 to 2011 through Random House. Kodansha's version is largely identical to the Dark Horse version.

Volumes

Reception

Sales and awards

The first volume, which was released on September 14, 1984, significantly exceeded sales expectations, with its print run increasing from an initial 30,000 copies up to nearly 300,000 copies within two weeks, becoming the number-one best-seller in Japan before eventually selling about 500,000 copies. By 1988, Akira had sold approximately 2 million copies in Japan, from the first four volumes averaging about 500,000 copies each. The manga was published in the United States in 1988, followed by Spain in 1990, France and Italy by 1991, and then Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Brazil thereafter. It was reported by Critique international that by 2000 Akira had sold over copies worldwide, including at least in Japan and overseas via the 38 issues of Epic Comics. By 2005, after the publication of the Dark Horse Comics editions in the original six tankobon volumes, Akira was published in more than a dozen languages worldwide. In 2020, the first volume of Akira became publisher Kodansha's first manga to receive a 100th printing. At a price of in Japan in Japan and overseas, for an estimated total of grossed worldwide.

During its run, the seinen manga magazine where it was first serialized, Weekly Young Magazine, experienced an increase in its weekly circulation, from 1 million in 1986 to 1.5 million in 1990. At an average manga magazine price of at the time, the 120 issues serializing Akira sold an estimated total of – million copies and grossed an estimated (). Fans in the United Kingdom voted it Favourite Comic at the 1990 Eagle Awards. It won a Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material in 1993, and was nominated for a Harvey for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work in 2002. In 2002, Akira won the Eisner Awards for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material and Best Archival Collection. The 35th anniversary edition won Best Archival Collection again at the 2018 Eisner Awards, in addition to Best Publication Design.

Critical reception

Akira is credited with having introduced both manga and anime to Western audiences. According to Kodansha USA's Naho Yamada, "Akira ignited a new generation of dynamism not only in manga but also in European and American comics. Its impact shattered all borders." The Essential Guide to World Comics states that the translation of the work into French in 1991 by Glénat "opened the floodgates to the Japanese invasion." The imagery in Akira, together with that of Blade Runner, formed the blueprint for similar Japanese works of a dystopian nature of the late 1990s, such as Ghost in the Shell and Armitage III. Yamada also said that "Otomo jacked into his generation's frustration with society, in the wake of the defeat of Japan's liberal student movement, and created an epic that, in true Japanese fashion, processed societal trauma through cataclysmic visual symbolism." Akira cemented Otomo's reputation and the success of the animated adaptation allowed him to concentrate on film rather than the manga form in which his career began. She also noted how Tetsuo and Kaneda seem like real teenage boys in the manga, not generic action figures like in the film's "grossly" simplified depiction of their relationship. Although stating that Akiras plot was still as topical as ever in the year 2009, Dacey felt that the art had not aged as gracefully. Pellegrini reviewed the series by making many comparisons to the animated film adaptation, calling the characterizations in the manga both "better and on par" with those in it. Loveridge wrote that "Akira still feels incredibly relevant 35 years later.

A video game, simply titled Akira, based on the animated film was released on December 24, 1988, by Taito for the Famicom console. In 2002, Bandai released a pinball simulation titled Akira Psycho Ball for the PlayStation 2.

On June 9, 1995, Kodansha released Akira Club, a compilation of various materials related to the production of the series. These include test designs of the paperback volume covers, title pages as they appeared in Young Magazine, images of various related merchandise and commentary by Otomo. Dark Horse collaborated with Kodansha to release an English-translated version of the book in 2007.

In 2002, Warner Bros. acquired rights to create an American live action film of Akira. Since the initial announcement, a number of directors, producers and writers have been reported to be attached to the film, starting with Stephen Norrington (writer/director) and Jon Peters (producer). By 2017, it was announced Taika Waititi would officially serve as the director of the live-action adaptation, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Michael Golamco. Warner Bros. planned to distribute the film on May 21, 2021, but after Waititi was officially confirmed to both direct and write Thor: Love and Thunder, the film was put on hold and removed from the release slot. In June 2025, Warner Bros. Pictures allowed the rights to the live-action film lapse, returning to the Akira manga publisher Kodansha.

On July 4, 2019, Bandai Namco Arts announced a new anime to be made by Sunrise (now a division of Bandai Namco Filmworks).

Legacy

Akira is considered a landmark work in the cyberpunk genre, credited with spawning the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre. It actually predates the seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984), which was released two years after Akira began serialization in 1982 and was not translated into Japanese until 1985. Akira inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk-infused manga and anime works, including Ghost in the Shell, Battle Angel Alita, Cowboy Bebop, and Serial Experiments Lain. Tetsuo Hara cited Akira as an influence on the dystopian post-apocalyptic setting of his manga Fist of the North Star (1983 debut). Manga artist Tooru Fujisawa, creator of Great Teacher Onizuka, cited Akira as one of his greatest inspirations and said it changed the way he wrote. Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto has cited both the Akira manga and anime as major influences, particularly as the basis of his own manga career. Bartkira, a fan-made web comic parody of Akira created by Ryan Humphrey, is a panel-for-panel retelling of all six volumes of the manga illustrated by numerous artists contributing several pages each, with Otomo's characters being portrayed by members of the cast of The Simpsons: for example, Kaneda is represented by Bart Simpson, Milhouse Van Houten replaces Tetsuo, and Kei and Colonel Shikishima are portrayed by Laura Powers and Principal Skinner respectively.

The city depicted in the first two stages of the 1992 video game Last Resort is very similar to that of Neo Tokyo from the anime film. In the 1998 video game Half-Life, aspects of the level design were influenced directly by scenes from the manga. For example, the diagonal elevator leading down to the sewer canals as well as the design of the canals themselves are taken from scenes in the manga. This was confirmed by Brett Johnson, the developer who designed the levels. The NeoTokyo mod for its 2004 sequel, Half-Life 2, was also inspired by Akira. In the 2002 video game The King of Fighters 2002, Kusanagi and K9999 have an Akira-esque intro before they fight.

The Akira Class starship from the Star Trek franchise, first introduced in the 1996 feature film Star Trek: First Contact, was named after the anime by its designer Alex Jaeger, of Industrial Light & Magic. In the 1998 film Dark City, one of the last scenes, in which buildings "restore" themselves, is similar to the last panel of the Akira manga. Its writer-director Alex Proyas called the end battle a "homage to Otomo's Akira". Director Josh Trank cited Akira as an influence on the 2012 film Chronicle.

Rapper Kanye West has a tribute to the anime film in his 2007 music video for "Stronger". Electronic pop group M83 created a three-part tribute to Akira (and other influences) with their music videos for "Midnight City", "Reunion" and "Wait". Rapper Lupe Fiasco's 2015 album Tetsuo & Youth was loosely inspired by the Akira character Tetsuo Shima.

In the original plans for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Opening Ceremony, Akira was to be featured in order to appeal to Japan's "soft power" among youth. The original plans featured Kaneda riding into the stadium on his motorcycle. As Japan scholar Tagsold notes, there is an inherent irony in the use of Akira to promote the 2020 Olympics. The original manga (and to a lesser extent the film) contains strong anti-Olympic sentiment and contains several references to the 1964 Olympics, and in the story the Olympics are also scheduled to be held in Tokyo in 2020, where they are to symbolize Japan's rebirth and recovery from a nuclear disaster that takes place in the 1980s in the story setting (the dates differ between the manga and the film). Tagsold notes, "By referencing the 1964 Games, Ōtomo paints a highly critical image of the first Tokyo Olympics, reflecting the mood of the early 1980s, when citizens vehemently opposed plans to host the Olympics in Nagoya." Nonetheless, the original plans also included Ōtomo creating an illustration for the ceremony, indicative of his own complex perspective on what the Olympics mean for Japan. Ultimately, the irony of an anti-Olympic story being used to promote the Olympics was avoided when the Olympics themselves were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the original production team was replaced.

Notes

References

Further reading

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