Information!

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.

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, near what is left of the old Tokyo, a giant crater. 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 mysterious 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.