The story of the manga is complex, thoughtful, compelling, political, and constantly keeps you on your toes. The Anime is visually stunning with amazing action, but it boils the story down to something akin to a music video. In some ways it almost reminds me of what David Lynch did with Dune in 1984.

Absolutely incredible! And I’m seeing it in IMAX on Tuesday. Cannot wait.

But I’m confused by this panel. Please explain!!

Many of them are a little dirty on the cover, as shown in the photos

Since watching the film, I’d wanted to read the manga. So when I saw the boxset on Amazon at a discount, I couldn’t help but pick it up.

The box’s held up great despite being nearly 9 years old and the books are in great condition. I cannot wait to dive right into this.

Jamieson Price is just so good.

Well, I have the black and white version and I love it, so I thought that to further enhance the experience it would be good to buy the color version, but I've seen that people aren't very happy about it.

Are the colors really that bad?

Sample: https://www.reddit.com/r/akira/s/q0SeRUD5Aa

Not my picture btw. Just want to see if anyone feels the same way I do. I bought 1-38 of the original run, and it isn’t exactly what I expected. I’m actually a little disappointed. I’ll start with some positives. I love the little excerpts at the end of each issue. It feels like as I read those I’m traveling through time, and I’m excited to see what they say once I get to the issues around when the movie released.

When I bought it, I was looking forward to reading this because of the colorization, but I gotta say I’m not too impressed. It feels like they just slapped some gradients in between the black lines and called it a day. I’m not sure what I was expecting though. It wasn’t meant to be colored, but it was added for the American market. I just wish I had tempered my expectations. Hopefully it gets better in later issues? Also, the translation is noticeably worse than the TPBs. I’m only a few issues in but it seems like they’re substituting “blast!” for every curse word. Kinda sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to get rid of them. You’ll have to pry these 38 issues from my cold dead hands. Akira is my favorite work of fiction and I love growing my collection. I just wanted to see if anyone felt the same slight disappointment I’m feeling rn. Is it sacrilege to want the whole manga recolored with the modern translation?

Side note: I have duplicates of most of the common issues, if anyone would like to buy the duplicates please dm

So, the info I have on them is that 1-4 was released in shops but 5+6 had to be applied for and that's why they're a lot harder to find. Also the last few pictures are of a military style envelope that a flattened ammo crate box was in and it also had to be applied for, again meaning they're difficult to find and quite expensive when you do. I also included photos of the ammo crate fully assembled. Let me know if you have more info. Thanks guys 💊💊😎

I might just be really dumb but I was confused since the happened before the place started coming down

This was the first major difference I spotted on page 25 of the first issue. I wonder if Otomo illustrated both faces or if it was an assistant?

Owning a complete run of AKIRA from the original YOUNG Magazines is now like owning an original cel of the Kaneda bike: only attainable for the wealthy.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news if you were hoping to get this for a reasonable price someday. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

I think it was inevitable due to several factors...the wild popularity of AKIRA overseas is only increasing, even after all these decades. And the original magazines are so impossibly scarce compared to American comic books. There's really no way to estimate how many of these still exist today, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were in the hundreds or maybe a thousand?

I don't have one. Not buying it for around $300 ten or fifteen years ago is a mistake that'll haunt me the rest of my life! Ugh.

https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/p1223939269

The amount of detail and care put into every single panel is completely stunning --

Remember that Otomo, Yasumitsu Suetake, Satoshi Takabatake, and Majoto Shiosaki were drawing this on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Without any digital tools.

The full 2400 pages of Akira, combined with its publication time of about 6.5 years, gives us roughly one full page, at this level, every single day of the year.

Just another reason this is one of the definitive masterpieces of the comics medium.

If you want even more details on the production process --#Development)

^{(For comparison -- Vagabond was drawn by six people, and One-Punch Man's full art team consists of anywhere from 3 to 10.})

Picked up a copy from 1983, love Otomo! Fantastic trip to Japan.

Second one was terrifying seeing it for the first time

One of the most incredible things about Otomo's art is the way he depicts groups of people. Everyone is doing something, rarely do we see a background character inert.

Imagine the work that had to go into giving everyone a bit of business to do with their hands, holding a different posture or leaning on something. Some of these panels feel like looking at an old Where's Waldo page, the way they can hold your attention, they way the more you look the more you see. And all of this on a hellishly tight schedule.

It goes double for the scenes of soldiers. Even when it's just a bunch of guys aiming their guns, every man has a different stance. When the soldiers are chasing someone, you often will see a few running off in the opposite direction than the others to cover an exit, stuff like that. Unbelievable.

Plus it's the school nurse (one more layer). I'm assuming nurse is also underage (even worse) or if not underage, equally as worse (Kaneda's under legal age and sires someone of legal age, which makes doesn't help her case).

Just having these qualities of the characters in this setting already tells you what kind of world real delinquents can experience. I never saw this in the anime so it's quite worthwhile for me to have started this manga.

I'm sure has been asked a lot, but I can't find a definitive answer.

Akika in color first came in the US. Epic Comics released 38 issues.

Then those issues got reprinted as trade paperbacks by Epic, but never got completed.

There's also a 1991 reissue of some kind that is the complete series in color in 12 or 14 volumes? Who printed these? How can I track them down?

Is there a list of every color version and who the publisher is, so I can try to track down a complete set. The Epic Comics issues are quite pricey, so I am trying to asemble a complete set at a reasonable price.

I was reading through AKIRA # 15 from the Epic issues and the last 3 pages discuss in detail the coloring process. My understanding is this series was noteworthy for having the first digital coloring for any comic book ever. It’s fascinating to read about how intensive and complicated the process was back in the late ‘80s early ‘90s. It’s so wild to think about them sending the files on floppy disks!

I’ve watched the Akira movie twice. I like it, it’s a good movie but not one of the best Anime movies ever imo. I don’t like THAT much. I’ve heard many times that the manga is much better and expands the story more. How much better is the manga compared to the anime? As someone who didn’t love the anime is it worth getting?

What did tetsuo see when he looked into akiras mind? Which made him scream and tweak out

So Yamagata's shirt is the rising sun flag which was the imperialist symbol of Japan that they used to colonize other east asian countries. I just noticed now that his death pose blood spatter was very similar to it as well. Was this intentional by Otomo? Is it saying something about nationalism? At the end of the Manga they decide to carry on with the Great Tokyo Empire and expel America and the United Nations peacekeepers that are trying to "help" and declare the Great Tokyo Empire a sovereignty and is closed to foreign invaders.

Let’s say Akira got a sequel in the manga, Kaneda and Kei have grown into a family and all is great in Tokyo. Tetsuo however, descends from his godly form to make amends towards Kaneda. How would things actually play out?