SPECIAL “WITH CONTEXT” EDITION
Most people who are familiar with Akira only know it via the movie and “KANEEEEEEDAAAA!” “TETSUUUUUOOOOOO!”, which is a shame because the movie, while visually spectacular, doesn’t do the complex plot of the manga justice: Otomo basically kept in the first third of the book and the final sixth, and tried to glue them together to create a coherent whole, and, bluntly, failed utterly to do so. I mean, the movie doesn’t even really have Akira in it, whereas in the manga he is a terrifying godlike force whose presence drives the story in the second half.
Anyhow, Akira the manga is about the results of scientists trying to cheat their way through human evolution and then the characters having to deal with (or be) the consequences of that. It’s pretty goddamned epic, but one of the reasons it remains great is because Otomo had the good sense to put Kaneda in: as the story progresses to the point where desperate soldiers are fighting demigods with space lasers, Kaneda grounds everything because he has next to no idea what’s really going on, and only gets involved because – at least at first – he’s trying to get with a girl. Watching him gradually become the hero of the piece, while never losing sight of the fact that he’s still kind of a big-mouthed jackass, is one of the reasons Akira’s scale is so effective.
Anyway, this all comes to a head when about three-quarters of the way through, Kei (the aforementioned girl) prepares to sacrifice herself against Tetsuo, taking the powers of the assorted good psychics within herself in an attempt to stop him once and for all – and, because she really does love the jackass, finally suggests to Kaneda that they spend a night together. Kaneda, after a double-take or three, loses it because he can’t accept her willingness to sacrifice her life, and storms off, saying he’ll kill Tetsuo himself (and believe me, he’s completely sincere about committing what you know has to be suicide).
And then this, one of my favorite bits in the entire series, when he storms back a second later:
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I guess one day(though it will take a few weeks) I’ll settle in and take on the manga. It’s just sort of overwhelming an under taking. I’m sure it’s genius, but isn’t it like nine volumes that are 500 pages each?
Where’d you get it in color? I’ve only ever seen the black and white Dark Horse editions. Was that how it was originally published?
PAH! It is a mere six volumes.
I don’t know how it was originally published in Seinen, but the Epic reprints from the 80s were all-color and glorious.
It was originally published in black and white and colorized by Marvel for the Epic releases. When Dark Horse re-released it, they kept it in the original black and white — and also re-translated it.
I get why Dark Horse kept it in black and white — they may not have even had access to the colorized version, and it is more faithful to the original manga. But Marvel really did a GREAT job colorizing it, and I wish that version was still widely available. It adds a lot more life and scope to the book without ever undercutting Otomo’s detail or tone.
What, no mention of Ryu? I hate it when they kept pronouncing his name as “Roy”. Ugh!
Yeah, but he *looked* like a Roy.
I’ve read/seen both and liked the movie better. Manga creaters are just as able and likely to pad out a success as American corporate comics and I think Akira was 203 volumns too long.
Around the 3rd tme Tetsuo turns into a giant baby thing, or when the Colonel has been zapping people with his satellite of DOOM for 200 pages I kind of turned out.
the film is a lot tighter, especailly with the new translation they did in 2000.
“I forgot something!”
“?!?”
“What your tonsils taste like.”
Never saw the anime, but read the manga. It’s okay, I guess, but I don’t think it’s all that great. And the “romance” just annoyed me. Why did she fall for this annoying moron who keeps harassing her? Because the protagonist always gets the girl! Gah.
Why did she fall for this annoying moron who keeps harassing her?
He was the only male in the city not mutated into a giant slug fetus.
Around or about the time the movie first hit, I picked up one of the Epic reprints: little squarebound things, and I got like issue thirty-something. Just to sample it. I don’t think anything in said issue is in the movie; and Kaneda and one of his gang members are in a tank-thing and a running gun battle.