Katsuhiro Otomo: The creator of

The creator of Akira was born in April of 1954 in Japan`s Miyago Prefecture, an agricultural fishing province some 400 kilometers north-east of Tokyo. He grew up there and attended Sanuma High School which, for a rural school, seems particularly favoured by the comic book muse. Various other prominent Japanese comic artists also graduated there. In high school Otomo became in his own words `crazy about the movies`. American films of the period in particular seemed to be capturing the new spirit of youthful unrest and rebellion all over the world. Movies such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Strawberry Statement had an important impact upon him and some of their sensibility can still be detected in Akira, Memories, Domu and other work.
Soon after graduating, Otomo moved to Tokyo with the goal of becomming a comic artist. His first professional work was an adaptation of the Prosper Merimee novelle Mateo Falcone, which appeared in the weekly magazine Action. Over the next few years Otomo created a number of short stories, which are now collected for the first time in the English language as Memories. Having achieved a promising degree of success and attention with these short works, Otomo began applying his skill to longer work. In 1979 publication began on Fireball, a story built around a `human versus mega-computer' theme. Though it appeared in a limited circulation magazine and is to date still uncompleted, Fireball marked the beginning of Otomo`s interest in the Science-Fiction action genre and established his following among high school and college students deeply addicted to the visual< culture. Fireball was the natural forerunner of Otomo`s most acclaimed works, Domu and Akria. Otomo went on to create Domu in 1980 with phenomenal success. Domu was an instant bestseller as well as a subject of some controversy. It created a stir when it won Japan`s SF Grand Prix in 1983 for best Science-Fiction story. This was the first time the prize had been awarded to a comics work.
Encouraged by the success of Domu, Otomo went on to create Akira, over 2,000 pages of artwork and story in six volumes, and the rest, as they say, is history. Akira went on to win every possible award, spawn video games, an animated feature film directed by Otomo himself (compared by critics to classic masterpieces such as Blade Runner, Clockwork Orange and Mad Max), merchandise, ranging from T-Shirts to lunch boxes, and toys. The books have been published in virtually every language and stand as a forerunner to the Manga wave everywhere. Katsuhiro Otomo lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.

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