Psychic apocalypses, super-powered sociopaths and scintillating cyberpunk action-sequencing; since its inception in the pages of Weekly Young Magazine in 1982, Katsuhiro Otomo’s groundbreaking postmodern epic Akira has been hailed as a trailblazing triumph not only of Japanese manga, but of science fiction as a whole. Having influenced nearly all major mangaka who came after him, with references and homages littering the pages of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and Kentaro Miura’s Berserk among others, Otomo created a rare work of art that transcends its medium through the heartfelt philosophical exhibition of storytelling it entails.

Following a diverse cross-section of characters in a post-apocalyptic society through the midst of a series of world-ending catastrophes based around secret government experiments on psychic children, Akira is often considered the height of “high concept” drama. It has been noted by critics as being notoriously difficult to summarize in terms of the plot and thematic concepts of the work, a trait it shares with its 1988 film adaptation (directed by Otomo himself). However, Screen Rant has you covered, so here’s everything you need to know about Akira, the most influential manga ever written.

Related: New Akira Anime Series In The Works From Original Creator

A Fever Dream Rabbit Hole To Hell

Tetsuo Demands Drugs in Akira comics

Akira is a seinen (18+) manga that ran from 1982-1990, set in the fictional city of Neo-Tokyo in 2019 where, 37 years previously, a mysterious explosion destroyed the original Tokyo, leading to an alternate history in which World War III occurred in the 1980s. The story first seems to focus upon a biker gang known as The Capsules, led by the nominal (albeit brashly unsympathetic) protagonist of the piece, Shōtarō Kaneda, a thinly-veiled satirical deconstruction of the typical Japanese children’s hero at the time, being a handsome, yet dimwitted teenaged hooligan. Of greater importance to the overall composition is his underling, the envious and insecure Tetsuo Shima, a pastiche in some regards of the archetypical “supporting” character. The inciting incident of Otomo’s epic occurs when Tetsuo is discovered to have potential psychic ability, and becomes of interest to the mysterious and ever-present Colonel Shikishima, leader of a secret government operation that researches these strange powers in children.

The premise of Akira seems to set up a conflict between the Colonel’s government operation (whose experiments are responsible for the original Tokyo’s destruction) and a band of freedom fighters that includes Kaneda’s sometime love-interest and deuteragonist Kei. However, Otomo subverts this expectation through the skillful use of a constant escalation in the action he provides, facilitated by his unrivaled sense of visual sequencing. Instead of this clean and recognizable moral parable, Akira offers a much more cerebral sense of dialectic, and portrays an increasingly desperate struggle among the characters as their alliances break apart in the midst of Tetsuo’s ascension to near godhood, his telekinetic powers growing ever stronger and more destructive. What begins as a street-level, futuristic adventure yarn spirals at breakneck, inexorable speed into a biblical apocalypse as the remaining super-powered psychics clash with Tetsuo, whose powers rival that of the world’s armies, but whose emotional instability and inability to control those powers lead to his committing more and more horrific acts of violence as well as painful mutations in his body.

An Apocalyptic Post-Apocalypse

At core to understanding Akira is appreciating the apocalyptic undercurrent of Japanese culture leading up to the manga’s 1982 debut, perhaps no more prevalent than in the manga’s persistent imagery of mass explosions and toppled buildings reminiscent of the 1945 nuclear bomb attacks that ended World War II. In Otomo’s imagination, these cataclysmic events were only the first in a series of increasingly devastating armageddons, culminating in the emergence of living superweapons and finally Tetsuo himself. Tetsuo serves as both a hauntingly personal figure in terms of his dejected life as a disaffected, underprivileged youth growing up in war-torn society, and as a terrifying symbol of the inherent danger of unlimited, uncontrollable power with his pitilessly destructive outbursts and progressively more childish volatility.

In many ways, Akira can most immediately be understood as Tetsuo’s story, and in this sense, the manga is best described as an early and comprehensively contemplative parable on the concept of an evil Superman, one with hyperreal brutality and devastating physical realism. Tetsuo, often clad in a similar cape, is depicted as the amalgamated nightmare consequences of a society unaccountable to its children and dominated by war: a violent, drug-addicted young street-thug who devolves into a mad dictator, an unkillable monster so consumed by the narcotic effects of his own power that it subsumes his very identity.

Related: Akira: 7 Differences Between The Anime And The Manga

In this sense, Otomo’s story can be read in many ways as a satire on contemporary Japanese children’s entertainment, such as the then-new Mobile Suit Gundam, which glorified Japan’s past militarization, highlighting a culture that childishly refused to learn from its past. Spun into a mesmerizing meditation on the inherent nature of power to corrupt, and how a powerful but neglected child might bring about the end of humanity, Akira becomes a commentary on the dangers to the audience in portraying an abusive power fantasy as entertainment.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Akira arrived at the height of the cyberpunk movement in international science fiction, with the manga debuting alongside films like Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Blade Runner along with seminal literature such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Many of the more philosophical quandaries of this subgenre concern the evolution of the human creature, and the seeming malleability of reality in the face of technological advances, such as the development of mind-altering narcotics and artificial intelligence. Otomo combined these emergent science fiction tropes with his own brand of fantasy, gradually building up the elements of magical realism in the subtle exhibitions of his character’s powers to an entrancing, if not terrifying result.

As a manga, it is further proof of the adage that every aspect of a work of art should hang together as a cohesive unit. What is so noteworthy about Akira in its exemplification of this discipline are the drastic changes in tone and scale the narrative takes the reader through as the carnage accumulates, through wild jet-car chases in secret government facilities and death-defying gang wars amidst post-apocalyptic wastelands. Diving into Otomo’s Neo-Tokyo, and its constant and ever-present specter of decimation at the capricious whims of godlike psychic beings, the reader undergoes a sense of immersion that has rarely been equaled in any medium, similar to the landmark Akira film but as a more complete and rounded experience. Otomo believed in fully fleshing out this world on the brink of annihilation, and so no stone is left unturned even as the walls and ceilings of Neo-Tokyo’s skyscrapers collapse and cave-in to sheer psychic force.

Perhaps the true reason behind its influence and longevity is its uncompromising nature as a sprawling, holistic narrative, expanding out to grand political spectacle and pulling back for more intimate moments of the struggle at an instant, turning on a dime with such style that it continues to be emulated nearly 40 years after its debut. It is a composition that holds together thanks to the singular vision of the artist Otomo, and, despite its 2,000+ page length, it is this dedication to balance in his story of abuse, decadence, power and apocalypse that rewards rereads of the series, regardless of the often bizarre subject matter. As a singular work of fiction, Akira remains not only the gold standard of manga, but of science fiction as well.

Next: Taika Waititi Is Still Trying To Make His Live-Action Akira Movie