Broken Frontier

Katsuhiro Otomo's name is forever etched in the minds of moviegoers and comic afficionados as the creator, writer and artist of Akira. The comic started in 1982 and was serialised until 1990. Exploring issues of corruption, power and isolation in a cyberpunk setting, it was a milestone in graphic storytelling.

Otomo himself headed up the anime version of Akira in 1988 which focuses on the first part of the graphic novel, up until right after the rise of Akira himself. The anime itself spawned a whole Akira craze due to its inventive setting and hyperkinetic action scenes. Akira, the movie formed a complete vision of its writer/director/animator own epic and oozes love for storytelling all through. While the ending had to be handled in a sort of esoteric way because the comic itself had not ended yet by that point, I always felt that it was true to the vision of Akira the manga (collected in six volumes by Dark Horse). If you have not seen it yet, run now to the vid store and settle yourself in for a wild ride through Neo-Tokyo and its punk bikers Kaneda and Tetsuo who become involved in a mad power scheme involving mutants, psychic experiments and government black ops organizations.

Click here to watch the big poster, courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art