Original Story by: Hitoshi Yoshioka
Director: Koichi Mashimo
Producer: Big West/King Record/VAP/Media Ring
Character Design: Tomohiro Hirata
Art Director: Masaru Satoh
Music by: Kenji Kawai
©1997 Hitoshi Yoshioka/Kadokawa Shoten/Tylor Project 24 minute episodes.
Genre: SciFi/Comedy

The History of Akira
The original AKIRA comic series was published in the December 6 edition of the Japanese comics anthology, Young Magazine, in 1982. From there on, it developed into a fast growing, extremely entertaining, and highly successful series in Japan. It was so thrilling that it was one of the basis for the now famous, and progressive Japanese Comic/Animation company Manga. AKIRA developed in the United States by way of Marvel/Epic Comics. They translated the series into English and released it in the US. It appeared to have even greater appeal to the American audience than the Japanese. Later, AKIRA's creator, Katsuhiro Otomo released the graphic novel series of the same name. Eventually, Streamline Pictures and Tokyo Movie Shinsha asked Otomoto develop his story for an animated feature film. The movie of AKIRA brought a new dimension to the story, containing the best state-of-the-art techniques. Minimal computer animation was used in this production. Otomo, admitting his taste for Disney films, sought to create an atmosphere of realism to assist in staging the graphic story, for which he achieved. Although the one major flaw with AKIRA is its consistency to alter the date of the original nuclear cataclysm, it does not interfere with what is possibly one of the greatest animated films since Walt Disney.

About the Film
The year is 1988 and a new type of bomb explodes over Tokyo, a terrifying unstoppable sphere of midnight energy that whipes the teeming city from the face of the planet and leaves a crator in its wake. This is the event which sparked off the third world war, shattering dozens of cities across the world in similar fashion. The year is now 2018, 30 years since the eventful occurance in Tokyo. Now Neo-Tokyo has grown from the ashes of its predessor, spreading around the gaping crator like a viralent mould. It is a city in the wild grip of technology gone mad, of crime gone epedemic. Rioters march on the streets, and gangs of motorcyclists howl through the neon-lit highways, waging vicious battles. Where death and maiming are commonplace.

The leader of one such a gang is KANEDA, a pill-popping tearway who leads his gang of teenage troops into battle on his huge scarlet motorcycle. With him rides TETSUO, a companion since childhood when they first met at an orpahanage. But the friendship they have is a competitive and uneasy one. Tetsuo is willing to take any frightening risks in order to prove his worth to kaneda and the other bikers. He does such a thing when the troop wage there on going war with the rival Clown gang. The gang has one intention to kill all of the opposition, but tetsuo comes into contact with a strange young boy named Takashi who is a government test subject with unheard of powers. It is then that tetsuo begins to be awakened to the power, the power of akira. This is a power which exists in us all, but we have to be awakened to that power. He then goes on a rampage in order to find out who the test subjects are, they are called Takashi, Kyoko and Masaru. These children spend all there day being cared for and on the constant care of drugs. As usual to Tetsuo's surprise he meets kaneda who has full intentions on recuing him but tetsuo has other plans.

The friendship between kaneda and tetsuo has now reached a critical point as tetsuo kills one of the troop which brings in outside intervention, now the government want him back. Soon tetsuo discovers a place in tokyo were the boy named akira is, and goes on a misssion to find him, but unknowing to testuo, this akira is something completely different to what he expects to find. He arrives at the olympic stadium basement and all hell begins to break loose as the government under the colonel attempts to destroy tetsuo using their satellite weapon S.O.L. But also Kaneda joins in the fray and attempts to personnally kill Tetsuo, but unknowing to them all the 3 test subjects arrive and call for akira who takes testuo away in a light that destroys the entire city an lays many citizens to death, as he cannot control this power. But soon one day they hope to....

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