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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Akira

Any truth to the belief that Otomo was inspired from Tetsujin 28 when he was writing Akira? I mean, Akira being the Number 28 psychic, Kaneda and Tetsuo's last names (I think Col. Shikishima might be related to this as well) or is it all a big coincidence? Inquiring minds want to know!

Of course, now that collective anger's been commodified with the help of Fight Club and Hot Topic, but as I personally noted on Twitter, I couldn't help but think of the protests in the Akira movie when I read what's been going on in Egypt and Wisconsin.

chicken: Yeah, Fight Club's kind of like that recurring joke about Che Guevara being on t-shirts.

[Otomo] spent some time in New York, which made a big impression on him; one of his first manga collections—which he now refuses to allow to be printed in English, apparently because he doesn't like it anymore—was Sayonara Nippon, a collection of New York stories.

It's the Moebius-influenced artwork, combined with Otomo's incredible feel for panel composition and page layout, that makes Akira such a stunning piece of work. Any time there's a small hiccup in the plotting or pacing, it's more than compensated for by the visuals.
Overall, it's one of the best - and most ambitious - Japanese comics I've ever read. Domu is even better.

That's only 'cus Carl didn't have the same distribution power as Manga video. But Akira was still bigger culturally here than GITS. [Though by then, I think the focus shifted to Ninja Scroll.] I mean, people initially thought that was the anime which appeared in that Michael Jackson 90s video, Scream. In fact, I think the only reason Akira might be as alien to later generations of manga/anime fans as Astro Boy was to us was that the era was different back then, given the rise of social networking, and emo. Oh and Anno killing anime with his "let's piss off everyone for the sake of pissing 'em off" approach, which is why we have moe. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't still a lot of legitimately alienated people out there, but Akira was one of the last titles which spoke to a generation of teens and young adults who were sick of being fed bullshit about their supposed value in society. Of course, now that collective anger's been commodified with the help of Fight Club and Hot Topic, but as I personally noted on Twitter, I couldn't help but think of the protests in the Akira movie when I read what's been going on in Egypt and Wisconsin.

ptolemy: Oh, and the notes for Naoki Urasawa in the U.S. edition of 20CB or Pluto say he liked Akira too.

I love the Akira manga. The anime... I think was the best you could do if you wanted to fit it into one movie. What's more, the series hadn't quite finished yet. Basically the ending of the manga was slapped on at about the midpoint of the manga, which unfortunately cuts out a lot of the explanations about what's going on and the evolution of characters like Kaneda and the Colonel into sympathetic heroes.

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What's more, the series hadn't quite finished yet.