About The Story

          Tokyo, as we know it, was destroyed by a kind of a new super-bomb of unknown origin. 9 hours after, World War III broke out and most of the major cities in the world were completely destroyed. 31 years after, Neo-Tokyo now stands, were the old Tokyo has been.

          One night, Kaneda and his motorcycle gang have an accident with a little boy with a wrinkled face, as one of an old man. Tetsuo, one of the gang's members crashes into the boy, who mysteriously remains unhurt and then simply vanishes from the eye.

          Tetsuo is brought to Hospital, and everything seems to have normalized. But that is not at all the case:

          The strange boy from the last night was a part of a secret military project dealing with supernatural powers. The project is lead by the "Colonel", who wants to develop human weapons with aid of these powers. On his trail are Ryu and Kei (not Kay), members of a semi-terroristic group, who want to discover and destroy his plans.

          And now Tetsuo is going to be a new member of the project. But his powers rise much faster than the Colonel has expected. Tetsuo manages to find out the location of an underground freeze chamber, where the mysterium AKIRA is kept.

          Akira, too was a member of the project. But why did they put him in the freeze chamber at 0,0005 Kelvin ? They were afraid of something. Something they couldn't control anymore. Something Tetsuo is going to set free really soon . . .

          And in midst of all the trouble: Kaneda and Kei.

About The Author

          Katsuhiro Otomo was born in April 1954 in Miyagi, a rural province situated 400 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. Even in his youth his love was for the screen and he often endured a trip lasting for three hours to visit the nearest film theatre. He was mostly impressed by american films of the seventies like >>Bonnie and Clyde<< or >>Easy Rider<<. After finishing school he moved to Tokyo in 1973 and released his first comic on the very same year: an adaptation of Prosper Merimée's >>Mateo Falcone<<.

          In the years afterwards he created a great number of short stories for the >>Action<< magazine which have been reprinted in four books. 1979 he released his first longer comic story >>Fireball<<. Otomo's style caused enthusiasm right away. The journal >>Asahi<<: "Just like the New-Wave-Movies that have closed the chapter of the old-fashioned Hollywood-style Otomo is now going to break with the traditions of the japanese comics." His story >>Domu<< of 230 pageshe wrote from 1980 to 1982 has ranked number one of the bestseller charts with 500,000 copies sold in 1983 and earned him the >>Great Science-Fiction Award<< which formerly have been awarded only to novels.

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