Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira exists in two distinct forms: a manga serialised in Kodansha's Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990, comprising 2,200 pages across six collected volumes; and a 1988 feature film directed by Otomo himself, produced while the manga was still serialising. Both are landmark works in their respective forms. The film is the work most often cited as having opened international audiences to anime as a serious medium; the manga remains one of the most ambitious long-form comics ever produced.
The manga (1982–1990)
Otomo began serialising Akira in Young Magazine in December 1982, drawing on motifs he had developed in his earlier short fiction (Domu: A Child's Dream, 1980–1981). The serial ran for eight years and reached approximately 2,200 pages. The collected six-volume edition published 1984–1993 is the form in which the work is now read. The manga's draftsmanship — precise architectural perspective, large-scale destruction set-pieces, individuated crowd figures — is uniformly cited as among the most accomplished in the medium.
The film (1988)
Otomo directed the film adaptation while the manga was still in serial, taking the story up to roughly volume three of what would become a six-volume manga and condensing and altering the ending substantially. The production was financed at approximately ¥1 billion — at the time the largest budget ever committed to a Japanese animated feature — by a consortium including Kodansha, Toho, Bandai, Hakuhōdō, and Mitsubishi Corporation. The film used 327 colours (compared to typical anime's roughly 50) and animated at approximately 24 frames per second rather than the limited-animation standard.
International reception
Akira's international art-house release and subsequent home-video distribution from 1989 onward gave many non-Japanese viewers their first exposure to feature anime treated as serious cinema. The film was widely reviewed in mainstream Western film press — a level of attention almost no prior anime had received — and is generally credited with seeding the audience for the subsequent waves of anime export in the 1990s.