Join us for the first meeting of our book club’s 2019 winter/spring season! This month we’re discussing Akira, to celebrate catching up to the futuristic year in which it takes place. Some small snacks will be provided; having read the book is not required but not encouraged. Purchasing the book is also not required (feel free to borrow from the library or a friend!) but if you choose to purchase the book with us, it is discounted 15% for the duration of our winter/spring 2019 season! (Through 4/18/19)

Akira is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo.  The work was published in the United States by Marvel Comics under their Epic Comics imprint, becoming one of the first manga works to be translated in its entirety into English. Otomo’s art is considered outstanding, and a watershed for both Otomo and the manga form.

Set in a post-apocalyptic and futuristic Neo-Tokyo, the manga focuses on the efforts of a teenaged biker gang leader Kaneda, political activist Kei, a trio of Espers, and Neo-Tokyo’s military leader Colonel Shikishima to prevent Tetsuo, Kaneda’s mentally-fractured childhood friend, from using his unstable telekinetic abilities to ravage the city and awaken a mysterious individual with similar psychic abilities named “Akira”. Through this work, Otomo uses conventions of the cyberpunk genre to detail a saga of political turmoil, social isolation, corruption, and power. It is considered a landmark work in the cyberpunk genre, credited with spawning the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre. An animated film adaptation  was released in 1988.

Akira was instrumental in an upsurge of manga popularity outside Japan, especially in United States as Epic Comics’ edition was colorized and coincided with the release of the film. It has won several awards, including the Kodansha Manga and Harvey Awards, and is named as being an important title in the French manga explosion.