AKIRA Hardcover Collection 1

The epic, timeless hit that inspired the legendary anime film and made the word "manga" part of the global vocabulary returns in a new hardcover edition. The AKIRA Hardcover Collection features the original right-to-left manga reading format and Katsuhiro Otomo's original, hand-drawn sound effects in a beautiful, large-sized collectible edition.

Thirty-eight years have passed since the end of World War III, and the megalopolis of Neo-Tokyo has sprung from the bones of the devastated old city. By night, the borderlands between glittering towers and irradiated ruins are ruled by criminals, cultists, and street gangs. Two childhood friends (and rivals), Kaneda and Tetsuo, ride with one of these gangs. By day, the military and a secret elite toy with the psychic phenomena that caused the devastation in the first place. A high-speed incident on a decrepit express road will lead to a collision between Tetsuo, Kaneda, and forces they cannot hope to understand and that will change them forever...

The AKIRA Hardcover Collection features the updated translation and lettering of the 35th Anniversary Edition box set, now collectible one book at a time. As in the box set, this six-volume version of the masterwork of Katsuhiro Otomo (Memories, Steamboy, Domu: A Child's Dream) features the creator's Japanese-language, hand-drawn sound effects and the original, right-to-left manga reading format in a 7"x10" casewrap hardcover.Katsuhiro Otomo is perhaps the manga artist who has most defined the medium over the last 50 years. From his breakout early short stories "A Gun Report"and "Fire-Ball" to his timeless longer works Domu: A Child's Dream, Memories, and, of course, AKIRA, Otomo's career punctuated the end of the "gekiga" era of the 1960s and 1970s and charted a new course toward Japanese manga and anime’s now-central place on the global cultural stage. No single work is more responsible for spreading anime fandom around the work than the film adaptation of AKIRA, which Otomo directed himself and which was the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. Today, Otomo is revered by generations of comics creators as a professional inspiration and by fans around the world for his work in manga, anime, live-action film, picture books, public art, and more.