Katsuhiro Otomo
Akira

"Men are incapable of seeing... they remain anchored to the ground and only see what's under their nose. When the ground trembles beneath their feet, then they panic. And that is the moment they give their soul to God or Buddha.

We don’t realize we are immersed in a flow much greater than us. Scientists always make grand calculations. An absurd amount... infinite time... unimaginable energy... and in the end, what remains of all this? The name of some scholar, nothing more. Yet that flow runs right before our eyes...

What does a man do when he tries to look at something far away? He squints... and when faced with something greater than himself? Opening his eyes is useless.

The universe is floating towards its final stage, what is high lowers, what is dense becomes rarefied and disperses. The direction is uniform and irreversible.

Humans are living beings and, as a herd, they try to oppose this principle; however, in the grand scheme of things, they too find themselves within the flow.

The only thing that can contrast this flow is "power": manifesting "power" can stop the flow, but it is temporary, because when it resumes its course, it increases its speed and returns to the starting state. When men manage to see the flow, they are overcome by great terror. You yourself have seen it...

Appearance is nothing but a shell. Akira is not within the flow...

Those who live within the flow cannot understand."

Just as in cinema and literature, manga (and the world of graphic novels/comics in general) have both purely commercial products and others more authorial and complex, or works that perfectly combine these multiple shades and needs. Entertainment and complexity, fun, action, and philosophical, spiritual reflection. AKIRA, which came out in Japan exactly forty years ago - it was 1982, the same year as the release of Blade Runner - undoubtedly belongs to this latter category.

An experience that will remain forever unforgettable. Over two thousand pages - divided into six volumes - of an epochal work, whose universe has marked the cyberpunk imagination, profoundly influencing the world of Japanese comics (from Alita, to mention the most important, to Shintaro Kago up to the recent Adou, though less significant) but also the common imagination in general, even having points of contact and in common with cinema and, in particular, an author like Tsukamoto. Who defined his Tetsuo (coincidentally, the key character in Otomo's work) as a "somewhat mischievous younger brother, not as perfect as AKIRA". Although, in truth, the director's reference was more to the film adaptation, released when the manga had not yet been completed. Anime adaptation that stands on its own, and which proves infinitely inferior to the literary work. But that is another story.

Otomo rightfully belongs in the category of geniuses for creating characters like the aforementioned Tetsuo, Lady Miyako, Akira, Takashi, Masaru and Koyoko, Kaneda, Kay... and especially for depicting a universe so dense with themes, cues, figures, issues, and implications; with multiple cultural references from his country but not only.

We talk about war, destruction, ruins, bombings (the Americans are pigs here too, not coincidentally given Japan's history), but above all about energy. The legacy of the atomic bomb is what most of all marked Japanese post-war culture. As it could not otherwise be. The emanation of power energy has characterized multiple anime and manga (with Dragon Ball being the easiest example to cite) and is symptomatic of a trauma that, in AKIRA, becomes explicit from the very first pages, where we are introduced to Neo Tokyo born from the ashes of the third world war. Which Otomo imagined for the late '80s, setting his creation thirty years later, practically in our days.

AKIRA is a universe made of motorcyclists and their gangs, militarism (another legacy of contemporary Japanese culture), warrior monks, experiments on children, premonitory dreams, corporal mutations (certainly not exempt from Cronenberg's lesson). Dimensional thresholds and boundaries, certainly children of Shinto culture. The flow of time, the memory of the universe, the spiritual world, memories, friendship. When we talk about AKIRA, we talk about an authentic masterpiece.

Otomo also suggested a willingness to discover a different humanity, compared to the materialistic one we know and take for granted. He had the vision of a humanity where in the future people might communicate and understand each other without the need for words and where there may be room for free will.

A spiritual world, if you will. Born from the ashes of the world, repeatedly destroyed by man's presumption of being able to handle an immense and unlimited power, but absolutely not within their reach. A power that we are not given to fully understand. As great as the one that gave origin to the universe itself.

In this sense, it is nice that in the end some issues remain open, certain questions unresolved. Above all: what eventually happened to Masaru, Kiyoko, and Akira after the latter absorbed Tetsuo? It is nice to imagine them now as purely spiritual beings, eternally hovering on the borderline between this dimension and the other. A dimension of pure omniscience, where memory, memories, dreams, past, and future are part of a single entity. And above all, finally free from their pain and suffering of a life conditioned by dependency on drugs. Just as free, in the end, is Tetsuo himself: a central character, perhaps the most beautiful of all, and who, despite his role as a villain, evokes infinite tenderness on more than one occasion. Especially at the end.

Just as the question remains suspended (or at least not explicitly resolved) about where Kaneda (the true hero of the story, in fact) was during his absence (the entire volume 4), following the energy emanation caused by Akira and before he fell from the sky after already appearing to Kay and being perceived by Tetsuo. It's likely he too was in that dimension suspended in time and space, trapped after being overwhelmed by Akira's wave (also known as Number 28).

Among the many things already listed, AKIRA is also a study on the consequences of the sudden end of a civilization, with the cyclical repetition of tribal dynamics, of adherents to one or more cults, of neo-imperialist logics albeit rather ambitious as they are improvised.

But more than anything else, it is an experience that only great sagas can offer. With all the love for the characters, passion for their respective stories, emotion and grief once you have ended the last page. Seen the last vignette. Reflected on the figures who disappeared but are alive forever in memory.