The epic, timeless hit that inspired the legendary anime film and made the word "manga" part of the global vocabulary returns in a new hardcover edition. The AKIRA Hardcover Collection features the original right-to-left manga reading format and Katsuhiro Otomo's original, hand-drawn sound effects in a beautiful, large-sized collectible edition.
The once glittering Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin, leveled in minutes by the infinite power of the child psychic Akira. From the flooded wasteland of rubble and anarchy rises the Great Tokyo Empire, populated by a ragtag army of zealots and crazies who worship and fear Akira ad his mad prime minister, Tetsuo, and angry teen with immense powers of his own—and equally immense, twisted ambitions. The world at large is not taking the threat lying down, and the military strength of the planet is massing to take on the empire, but will technology's most advanced weaponry be enough to destroy Akira? And are Tetsuo's rapidly growing paranormal abilities a potentially greater threat?
Katsuhiro Otomo is perhaps the manga artist who has most defined the medium over the last 50 years. From his breakout early short stories "A Gun Report"and "Fire-Ball" to his timeless longer works Domu: A Child's Dream, Memories, and, of course, AKIRA, Otomo's career punctuated the end of the "gekiga" era of the 1960s and 1970s and charted a new course toward Japanese manga and anime’s now-central place on the global cultural stage. No single work is more responsible for spreading anime fandom around the work than the film adaptation of AKIRA, which Otomo directed himself and which was the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. Today, Otomo is revered by generations of comics creators as a professional inspiration and by fans around the world for his work in manga, anime, live-action film, picture books, public art, and more.
The epic, timeless hit that inspired the legendary anime film and made the word "manga" part of the global vocabulary returns in a new hardcover edition. The AKIRA Hardcover Collection features the original right-to-left manga reading format and Katsuhiro Otomo's original, hand-drawn sound effects in a beautiful, large-sized collectible edition.
The once glittering Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin, leveled in minutes by the infinite power of the child psychic Akira. From the flooded wasteland of rubble and anarchy rises the Great Tokyo Empire, populated by a ragtag army of zealots and crazies who worship and fear Akira ad his mad prime minister, Tetsuo, and angry teen with immense powers of his own—and equally immense, twisted ambitions. The world at large is not taking the threat lying down, and the military strength of the planet is massing to take on the empire, but will technology's most advanced weaponry be enough to destroy Akira? And are Tetsuo's rapidly growing paranormal abilities a potentially greater threat?
Creators
Katsuhiro Otomo is perhaps the manga artist who has most defined the medium over the last 50 years. From his breakout early short stories "A Gun Report"and "Fire-Ball" to his timeless longer works Domu: A Child's Dream, Memories, and, of course, AKIRA, Otomo's career punctuated the end of the "gekiga" era of the 1960s and 1970s and charted a new course toward Japanese manga and anime’s now-central place on the global cultural stage. No single work is more responsible for spreading anime fandom around the work than the film adaptation of AKIRA, which Otomo directed himself and which was the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. Today, Otomo is revered by generations of comics creators as a professional inspiration and by fans around the world for his work in manga, anime, live-action film, picture books, public art, and more.
