Katsuhiro Otomo

Akira opens with Tokyo E*X*P*L*O*D*I*N*G. Years later, and it's now Neo-Tokyo, and it's about to E*X*P*L*O*D*E. A biker gang full of lively young assholes racing on the motorway yelling each other's names through the heart of destruction run into a strange, tiny, shrunken old man who makes a motorbike esplode. Sorry, E*S*P*L*O*D*E. That's pretty much the start of things E*X*P*L*O*D*I*N*G all over the place, including the friendship between young biker assholes Kaneda and Tetsuo, with the show more latter suddenly finding amazing psychic powers triggered inside himself that lets him E*X*P*L*O*D*E things like windows and doors and people. Friendship turns to murderous rivalry and all-out warfare with stuff E*X*P*L*O*D*I*N*G all over the place, but it's still pretty small-scale, relatively. There's also a secret military project and an underground resistance and the mysterious A-KI-RA who seems to make everyone's pants E*X*P*L*O*D*E with terror.

It's utterly astonishing. The scale, they style, the energy, the scope, the E*X*P*L*O*D*I*N*G, are like absolutely nothing else. E*X*P*L*E*X*E*L*L*E*N*T. show less

Funnily enough, this was where I came in. My very first issue of Akira was the issue the whole epic did a sort of hard reset from urban sci-fi psychic action thriller to urban post-apocalyptic psychic war cosmic sci fi body horror mega bomboozlebugaaboom. Yes, I ran out of words for what this turned into, and my very fist issue plunged me head first into it and I had no idea who these people were, what was going on or why but I freaking LOVED it. Kaneda isn't even in this stretch of the show more story, he's off floating in nowhere with the top halves of several buildings and a load of doomed screaming soldiers. As far as I was concerned the most awesome central protagonist was Chiyoko who carried small portable missiles under her cloak and smushed rapist's heads with them and then blew up his friends. Chiyoko's the best.

Anyway, Neo-Tokyo is devastated and cut off, a fleet of warships hovering off the coast and special ops forces slipping in. Tetsuo's set up a new Empire all of his own, with Akira as the figurehead, using psychic powers to inspire religious fanaticism and drugged food to control his followers. Lady Miyako has opened her temple to refugees, Kei and Chiyoko are caring for the other psychic children and the Major is plotting revenge.

Lots of bloody confrontations and chasing and psychic blow-outs build to Tetsuo going cold-turkey and lashing out wildly with his powers while his followers invade Miyako's temple. Fun and games! It literally never stops, the relentless pacing, the escalation and destruction and bloodshed. Neo Tokyo hasn't stopped E*X*P*L*O*D*I*N*G you know. show less

Akira is awake and what a cute bundle of untapped psychic force of creation strong eough to shatter the world he turns out to be! On the run and hiding with the awesome Chiyoko, Kei and Kaneda reach out to the resistance, but there is treachery afoot! With the Colonel and the military and two factions of the resistance after them, and after Akira the actions rolls furiously through the city until everything builds to the biggest E*X*P*L*O*S*I*O*N of them all, a sequence up there with Moore's show more Miracleman for sheer destructive power unleashed on the pages of a comic book. It is off the charts. And this is where the film ended. The comic is only getting started. show less

In a residential high-rise block, a string of mysterious deaths attracts the attention of the local police, but they are utterly baffled by the lack of connection, motive or even means, to the extent they begin to think about supernatural causes - but the truth is, a powerful psychic, an old man sunk into the second childhood of senility, is killing people on avaricious whims. The arrival of a young girl with powers to rival his own prompts him to attack a perceived threat with devastating show more consequences. The girl is more powerful, but the old man is wily and ruthless. The psychic war that breaks out across the apartment block is dizzying, dynamic, with stunning shifts in perspective across the modern architecture and tearing through the lives of the modern community.

Though Otomo expanded on themes from Domu in the science fictional Akira, Domu is very much a horror comic, with haunting, unsettling moments, ugly violence, strange visions, psychological manipulation and after the shattering pyrotechnocs of the central confrontation, an amazing climax of quieter, slowly building tension. show less