"It’s a good book. Very good, actually. Very good war comics, requiring no prior experience with anime or mecha or Gundam – just a well-made, old-fashioned war comic, full of thrills and spills and lucky breaks and narrow escapes and preening villains you’ll love to hate and pigheaded heroes you may hate to love, and expert drawings by a master craftsman, and hard, sturdy violence." - Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal
"It's not often that I bother taking up space just to discuss the presentation of a book, but this is certainly one of Vertical's finest releases. Both the graphic and actual material design of the cover is special, and the interior is of a much higher quality than your average manga. This especially holds true throughout the healthy handful of color sections, which look absolutely gorgeous on the glossy paper stock...The whole package is an absolute must for fans of Gundam, but I'd say there's plenty to enjoy in this nearly 450-page monster for anyone remotely interested in mech action and sci-fi storytelling." - Otaku USA
"This is the root of all the tropes and themes of Gundam but with a loving layer of refinement that cleans up a lot of the rough edges of the original...It many ways this is the clearest vision of the original story and a great place to start as well as revisit." - Reverse Thieves
"From the painted opening prologue, the storytelling is of an incredibly high standard, with Yasuhiko’s touch servicing action scenes especially well. Visual highlights abound... It’s a dazzling, action packed ride, and I’d recommend it highly." - Anime UK News
"It’s a good book. Very good, actually. Very good war comics, requiring no prior experience with anime or mecha or Gundam – just a well-made, old-fashioned war comic, full of thrills and spills and lucky breaks and narrow escapes and preening villains you’ll love to hate and pigheaded heroes you may hate to love, and expert drawings by a master craftsman, and hard, sturdy violence." - Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal
"It's not often that I bother taking up space just to discuss the presentation of a book, but this is certainly one of Vertical's finest releases. Both the graphic and actual material design of the cover is special, and the interior is of a much higher quality than your average manga. This especially holds true throughout the healthy handful of color sections, which look absolutely gorgeous on the glossy paper stock...The whole package is an absolute must for fans of Gundam, but I'd say there's plenty to enjoy in this nearly 450-page monster for anyone remotely interested in mech action and sci-fi storytelling." - Otaku USA
"This is the root of all the tropes and themes of Gundam but with a loving layer of refinement that cleans up a lot of the rough edges of the original...It many ways this is the clearest vision of the original story and a great place to start as well as revisit." - Reverse Thieves
"From the painted opening prologue, the storytelling is of an incredibly high standard, with Yasuhiko’s touch servicing action scenes especially well. Visual highlights abound... It’s a dazzling, action packed ride, and I’d recommend it highly." - Anime UK News
Volume 1 of Akira, the ground-breaking sci-fi manga set in dystopian, war-torn Neo-Tokyo is now back in stock! While you’re picking up your copies, make sure to explore some of our similar titles where heroes struggle for survival and justice in destroyed worlds and decimated societies:
