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Akira [アキラ] #4
Akira, Band 4
Bei den Auseinandersetzungen um den unberechenbaren Akira stirbt Takashi. Die Energie, die durch seinen Tod freigesetzt wird, aktiviert Akiras Kräfte und Neu-Tokio wird durch einen gleißenden Blitz vernichtet. Nach der Katastrophe eröffnet Miyako einen Tempel für die Verletzten und Obdachlosen. Um zu erfahren, was es mit Akiras übernatürlichen Kräften auf sich hat, sucht Tetsuo Miyako auf. Tetsuos Vertrauter ruft eigenmächtig eine allgemeine Mobilmachung für Neu-Tokio aus und bläst zum Sturm auf Miyakos Tempel. Miyako ist es währenddessen gelungen, andere Kinder mit übernatülichen Kräften um sich zu versammeln und dem Angriff auf ihren Tempel standzuhalten. Sie will verhindern, dass Tetsuos Kräfte außer Kontrolle geraten. In den Ruinen des zerstörten Neu-Tokios kommt es zu einem Kampf der Giganten ...
400 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 1987
143 people are currently reading
3297 people want to read
About the author
Katsuhiro Otomo
316 books876 followersKatsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese manga artist, film director, and screenwriter. For his works in Japanese see 大友克洋. He is perhaps best known for being the creator of the manga Akira and its anime adaptation, which are extremely famous and influential. Otomo has also directed several live-action films, such as the recent 2006 feature film adaptation of the Mushishi manga.
Katsuhiro Otomo was born in the former town of Hasama, in Miyagi Prefecture.
As a teenager growing up in the turbulent 1960s, he was surrounded by the demonstrations of both students and workers against the Japanese government. The riots, demonstrations, and overall chaotic conditions of this time would serve as the inspiration for his best known work, Akira. Some would argue that this seminal work is an allegory of 1960s Japan, and that one could easily substitute the year 2019 for 1969 and leave little difference in the basic story.
The animation from this period (especially the works coming out of Tokyo animation studios Mushi Production and Toei Doga, now known as TOEI Animation) were influencing young Otomo. Works like Tetsujin 28-go, Astro Boy, and Hols: Prince of the Sun would help push Otomo toward a career in animation. However, it was the films coming out of America that were driving his rebellious nature. Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider would serve as inspiration for Shotaro Kaneda and his biker gang in Akira: rebellious youth who took too many drugs and didn't care about authority or the pressures put on them by their parents' generation.
Otomo has recently worked extensively with noted studio Sunrise with the studio animating and producing his most recent projects, the 2004 feature film Steamboy, 2006's Freedom Project and his latest project, SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next, released in 2007.
Otomo grew up a fanatic of American blockbusters, which has influenced his cinematic style throughout his huge career. He grew fond of the work of artists like Moebius, and is often regarded as the person who brought a Westernized style into manga. From the late seventies onwards, Otomo created numerous volumes of anthologies and short stories, which usually ran at 23 pages each. Serialization for Fireball was cancelled, though the premise and themes were later to appear in the Sci-Fi Grand Prix award winning Domu and Akira. Otomo later moved onto directing and creating notable anime like the film adaption of Akira, Memories, and Steamboy. His most recent manga have been the scripting of Mother Sarah and the short story Park released in an issue of Pafu last year. He has also directed several live action films, such as World Apartment Horror, Give Us A Gun/Give Us Freedom, and the 2006 feature film adaptation of the Mushishi manga.
Katsuhiro Otomo was born in the former town of Hasama, in Miyagi Prefecture.
As a teenager growing up in the turbulent 1960s, he was surrounded by the demonstrations of both students and workers against the Japanese government. The riots, demonstrations, and overall chaotic conditions of this time would serve as the inspiration for his best known work, Akira. Some would argue that this seminal work is an allegory of 1960s Japan, and that one could easily substitute the year 2019 for 1969 and leave little difference in the basic story.
The animation from this period (especially the works coming out of Tokyo animation studios Mushi Production and Toei Doga, now known as TOEI Animation) were influencing young Otomo. Works like Tetsujin 28-go, Astro Boy, and Hols: Prince of the Sun would help push Otomo toward a career in animation. However, it was the films coming out of America that were driving his rebellious nature. Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider would serve as inspiration for Shotaro Kaneda and his biker gang in Akira: rebellious youth who took too many drugs and didn't care about authority or the pressures put on them by their parents' generation.
Otomo has recently worked extensively with noted studio Sunrise with the studio animating and producing his most recent projects, the 2004 feature film Steamboy, 2006's Freedom Project and his latest project, SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next, released in 2007.
Otomo grew up a fanatic of American blockbusters, which has influenced his cinematic style throughout his huge career. He grew fond of the work of artists like Moebius, and is often regarded as the person who brought a Westernized style into manga. From the late seventies onwards, Otomo created numerous volumes of anthologies and short stories, which usually ran at 23 pages each. Serialization for Fireball was cancelled, though the premise and themes were later to appear in the Sci-Fi Grand Prix award winning Domu and Akira. Otomo later moved onto directing and creating notable anime like the film adaption of Akira, Memories, and Steamboy. His most recent manga have been the scripting of Mother Sarah and the short story Park released in an issue of Pafu last year. He has also directed several live action films, such as World Apartment Horror, Give Us A Gun/Give Us Freedom, and the 2006 feature film adaptation of the Mushishi manga.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 477 reviews
May 18, 2023
A shattered and broken Neo-Tokyo divides into two camps. Tetsuo reaches a crossroads. Shit gets real when the Americans and Soviets enter the arena. Kaneda's missing. The story feels more mainstream-y now, but to be frank, I am still struggling to work out what the art is depicting for a lot of person to person skirmishes and even some basic interactions like conversations! A 6 out of 12, Three Star read. I read the all colour volume by Eclipse (Epic Comics) covering Akira # 17 -24, 512 pages
2020 read; 2012 read
2020 read; 2012 read
October 14, 2016
This shit is epic.
March 16, 2022
Review for book 5 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Outline of the story: After the destruction of Neo-Tokyo, the Grand Tokyo Empire declaims independence from Japan, survivors are pretty much in survival mode, fighting violently over food, women and resources. Under Akira's rule (well, actually it was Tetsuo or his people who called all the shots now), people are taking a 'shoot first ask question later' approach.
As Tetsuo's power grows, his mentality also becomes increasingly unstable, hurting everyone in his path, Lady Miyako offers him some answers to the mystery of the Project and Akira's power, but what is her purpose?
I like that it's highlighted that the adults who are in power are mostly corrupted and manipulative, but putting power on a bunch of youngsters' hands might also result in a regime of terror as well. It's so much more complicated than the usual 'Adults=Bad, Teens=Good' mindset we used to find in the popular YA novels these days...
PS: As to the fact that the most destructively powerful being in the series has the appearance of a 5 years old boy, it just reminds me of the fact that the atomic bomb that destructed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 is also called "Little Boy".
Outline of the story: After the destruction of Neo-Tokyo, the Grand Tokyo Empire declaims independence from Japan, survivors are pretty much in survival mode, fighting violently over food, women and resources. Under Akira's rule (well, actually it was Tetsuo or his people who called all the shots now), people are taking a 'shoot first ask question later' approach.
As Tetsuo's power grows, his mentality also becomes increasingly unstable, hurting everyone in his path, Lady Miyako offers him some answers to the mystery of the Project and Akira's power, but what is her purpose?
I like that it's highlighted that the adults who are in power are mostly corrupted and manipulative, but putting power on a bunch of youngsters' hands might also result in a regime of terror as well. It's so much more complicated than the usual 'Adults=Bad, Teens=Good' mindset we used to find in the popular YA novels these days...
PS: As to the fact that the most destructively powerful being in the series has the appearance of a 5 years old boy, it just reminds me of the fact that the atomic bomb that destructed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 is also called "Little Boy".
October 10, 2017
The first part of volume four, despite a tense cat-and-mouse fugitive type of action set in a post-postapocalyptic world, felt flat and a bit of a drag. The sense of vagueness that radiates around the numbered people irritiates me sometimes (so I am glad that 19 gave a bit of backstory about them). Aside from Tetsuo who got a cringy sexy time with three girls and got trippy high as f*ck hallucinations, the others, even Akira himself didn't do anything.
Chiyoko. By all means, do not mess with this woman.
Chiyoko, that fine brute deserves a standing ovation in what she did in this book. Cheers to your sheer strength and braveness, ma'am!
But everything once again becomes a solid piece of material once commences. From there on, Katsuhiro Otomo once again delivered a spectacular display of chaos and destruction.
Chiyoko. By all means, do not mess with this woman.
Chiyoko, that fine brute deserves a standing ovation in what she did in this book. Cheers to your sheer strength and braveness, ma'am!
But everything once again becomes a solid piece of material once commences. From there on, Katsuhiro Otomo once again delivered a spectacular display of chaos and destruction.
February 7, 2021
Very unexpected! Volume 4 is all I wanted from the story as it diverts from the usual build up and shows us the aftermath of that epic ending we had in Vol. 3 but it really starts to suck with the plot. At the final chapters it gets so bad with all the weird gun fighting and watching the main characters dodging all the bullets over and over ... it takes away any sense of danger that we had in the first books.
The art is better than ever before, and I love this setting of a post apocalypse but that's not why I am reading this.. It started out really promising but ended quite badly.
3.5 out of 5 stars
The art is better than ever before, and I love this setting of a post apocalypse but that's not why I am reading this.. It started out really promising but ended quite badly.
3.5 out of 5 stars
January 19, 2019
Three years had passed between the release of the third volume and this one here in 1987. And it shows.
The first three books are full of exceptionally fast paced action. And they were fun to read. But they're also lacking in terms of depth and likeable characters.
With this volume, now set in a Neo-Tokyo that's lying in ruins, Otomo adds several layers to his storytelling. But unfortunately those are more on the weird rather than on the conclusive side.
He traded action for mythology and a grim view of society in a post apocalyptic world. It wasn't a good trade. While the addition of nudity, violence, drug-induced fever dreams and several attempted rapes might be fitting for such a scenario there's just no exploration of human behavior, no deeper meaning, nothing that makes the reader really think about it. It's all just there and it doesn't mesh well with the still somewhat juvenile dialogue in this series.
On the plus side, he has a strong main character now with Kei (thank God) instead of Kaneda. I just wish he would have made more of it.
And Akira basically doesn't do anything in this one. That was a huge letdown.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the previous three volumes were better books. But they were better executed and certainly more fun to read.
Only two stars this time.
Two more books to go.
The first three books are full of exceptionally fast paced action. And they were fun to read. But they're also lacking in terms of depth and likeable characters.
With this volume, now set in a Neo-Tokyo that's lying in ruins, Otomo adds several layers to his storytelling. But unfortunately those are more on the weird rather than on the conclusive side.
He traded action for mythology and a grim view of society in a post apocalyptic world. It wasn't a good trade. While the addition of nudity, violence, drug-induced fever dreams and several attempted rapes might be fitting for such a scenario there's just no exploration of human behavior, no deeper meaning, nothing that makes the reader really think about it. It's all just there and it doesn't mesh well with the still somewhat juvenile dialogue in this series.
On the plus side, he has a strong main character now with Kei (thank God) instead of Kaneda. I just wish he would have made more of it.
And Akira basically doesn't do anything in this one. That was a huge letdown.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the previous three volumes were better books. But they were better executed and certainly more fun to read.
Only two stars this time.
Two more books to go.
March 8, 2019
"When a man tries to see into the distance, what does he do? He narrows his eyes. Even with your eyes opened as wide as they will go...you cannot perceive something so large that it is beyond the range of your vision."
Kaneda doesn't take part in this novel. Tetsuo returns to us. The novel contains many religious overtones, more in line with mystical Taoism (as far as my limited knowledge reaches). You decide (Lady Miyako speaks):
"It is only when he is afraid that he considers the other world, and then he will gladly sell his soul to whatever god or Buddha offers him hope. In reality, we are all part of the flow of the same cosmic stream. Even scientists don't grasp what their calculations truly show them...infinity...time without space...eternity...space without bounds...energy beyond imagination...and what do they do with their findings? Announce them at society dinners for plaques and the recordings of their names in the annals of history. No more than that! But even so...the stream flows on beyond our awareness."
Religous/ Spiritual themes fit the cyberpunk template.
Akira has been exalted by Tetsuo as a new emperor, a god. They call him "Mighty Lord," and "Savior." They say, "Great Master, hear my prayers!" Tetsuo does all the work while Akira says nothing. He establishes a "Great Tokyo Empire."
Akira intervenes through psychic means, into Tetsuo's mind, after he kills three of four girls who stripped naked to lay with him. I interpret this act pissed the little demigod off. Tetsuo sees old friends, old family memories, his former connections to goodness. He goes to Lady Miyako for answers. She tells him he can go as deep as Akira but has to drop the drugs. It is his destiny. He tries to do it and suffers. In this, hopes arose in my heart he would turn back to the good, former Tetsuo. An idea I believe the author may have purposed to arise in the reader.
Kei and Chiyoko struggle to bring Kiyoko to Lady Miyako. They fight through many battles and Chiyoko find the colonel, wandering the streets with a turban-like rag on his head. He helps their cause, having owned the initial responsibility for Kiyoko.
This blind guy wears a bandana over his eyes with a huge eyeball tattooed on top of his balding head, stands in high places and amplifies his voice to Tetsuo's people, warning them of things to come. I don't know specifics, but I believe this comes out of ancient Greece, somewhere, somehow.
Kaneda appears as a ghost of fire to Kei. He says, "K...Kei...wh-where am I?" He disappears. He had appeared in the same way to himself in the first novel.
Tetsuo's right-hand man rebels and takes upon himself to call a raid on Miyako's temple, and brings about a massacre against many peaceful priests, and innocent refugees. Much battle and warfare ensues, as Kei and Chiyoko enter.
Tetsuo has a revelation. He meets Akira in the outer universe and in the smallest elements. Somehow. He then creates a massive storm as he continues to withdrawal from the drugs.
A building drops out of the sky. Kaneda appears. The last frame shows Kaneda, and he says, "Is it over?"
I had a thought about Lady Miyako, number 19. Could this explain the mystery of Stephen King, and his katet of the nineteen?
Miyako also explains the origin of the superpowers from brain experiments, and how she started with the kids. The kids, then, are old, but somehow kept their stature and child-likeness.
Kaneda doesn't take part in this novel. Tetsuo returns to us. The novel contains many religious overtones, more in line with mystical Taoism (as far as my limited knowledge reaches). You decide (Lady Miyako speaks):
"It is only when he is afraid that he considers the other world, and then he will gladly sell his soul to whatever god or Buddha offers him hope. In reality, we are all part of the flow of the same cosmic stream. Even scientists don't grasp what their calculations truly show them...infinity...time without space...eternity...space without bounds...energy beyond imagination...and what do they do with their findings? Announce them at society dinners for plaques and the recordings of their names in the annals of history. No more than that! But even so...the stream flows on beyond our awareness."
Religous/ Spiritual themes fit the cyberpunk template.
Akira has been exalted by Tetsuo as a new emperor, a god. They call him "Mighty Lord," and "Savior." They say, "Great Master, hear my prayers!" Tetsuo does all the work while Akira says nothing. He establishes a "Great Tokyo Empire."
Akira intervenes through psychic means, into Tetsuo's mind, after he kills three of four girls who stripped naked to lay with him. I interpret this act pissed the little demigod off. Tetsuo sees old friends, old family memories, his former connections to goodness. He goes to Lady Miyako for answers. She tells him he can go as deep as Akira but has to drop the drugs. It is his destiny. He tries to do it and suffers. In this, hopes arose in my heart he would turn back to the good, former Tetsuo. An idea I believe the author may have purposed to arise in the reader.
Kei and Chiyoko struggle to bring Kiyoko to Lady Miyako. They fight through many battles and Chiyoko find the colonel, wandering the streets with a turban-like rag on his head. He helps their cause, having owned the initial responsibility for Kiyoko.
This blind guy wears a bandana over his eyes with a huge eyeball tattooed on top of his balding head, stands in high places and amplifies his voice to Tetsuo's people, warning them of things to come. I don't know specifics, but I believe this comes out of ancient Greece, somewhere, somehow.
Kaneda appears as a ghost of fire to Kei. He says, "K...Kei...wh-where am I?" He disappears. He had appeared in the same way to himself in the first novel.
Tetsuo's right-hand man rebels and takes upon himself to call a raid on Miyako's temple, and brings about a massacre against many peaceful priests, and innocent refugees. Much battle and warfare ensues, as Kei and Chiyoko enter.
Tetsuo has a revelation. He meets Akira in the outer universe and in the smallest elements. Somehow. He then creates a massive storm as he continues to withdrawal from the drugs.
A building drops out of the sky. Kaneda appears. The last frame shows Kaneda, and he says, "Is it over?"
I had a thought about Lady Miyako, number 19. Could this explain the mystery of Stephen King, and his katet of the nineteen?
Miyako also explains the origin of the superpowers from brain experiments, and how she started with the kids. The kids, then, are old, but somehow kept their stature and child-likeness.
August 22, 2018
“That doesn’t explain why Akira’s powers are so immense.”
“How do you explain your own powers? You can move things by the power of your mind and destroy with but a thought. If you chose, you could lay waste to all the energy mankind has amassed. Compared to the power within you, the total energy of the world is nothing more than a gentle breeze.
Man is incapable of seeing past the end of his nose. He huddles upon the ground, staring at his own feet. It is only when he is afraid that he considers the other world, and then he will gladly sell his soul to whatever god or buddha offers him hope.
In reality, we are all part of the flow of the cosmic stream. Even scientists don’t grasp what their calculations truly show them. Infinity... time without space... eternity... space without bounds... energy beyond imagination... and what do they do with their findings? Announce them at society dinners for plaques and the recordings of their names in the annals of history. No more than that!
But even so... the stream flows beyond our awareness. When a man tries to see into the distance, what does he do? He narrows his eyes. Even with your eyes opened as wide they will go, you cannot perceive something so large that it is beyond the range of your vision.
The universe flows toward the ultimate conclusion. What is higher becomes lower... destiny grows thin... order seeks entropy... the ultimate trend toward the uniformity of all things is inevitable and irreversible. Men gather together as though they would reverse the cosmic steam, but in truth they are only driftwood.
Yet, even as the stream sweeps them along they possess one power capable of stopping the stream. When this power is used, the stream will stop for an instant... and then resume its course with doubled intensity.
When it is before them, people recognise the stream for what it is and fear its power, as you’ve already seen.
Look beyond form and consider substance.
Akira is not in the stream.”
“How do you explain your own powers? You can move things by the power of your mind and destroy with but a thought. If you chose, you could lay waste to all the energy mankind has amassed. Compared to the power within you, the total energy of the world is nothing more than a gentle breeze.
Man is incapable of seeing past the end of his nose. He huddles upon the ground, staring at his own feet. It is only when he is afraid that he considers the other world, and then he will gladly sell his soul to whatever god or buddha offers him hope.
In reality, we are all part of the flow of the cosmic stream. Even scientists don’t grasp what their calculations truly show them. Infinity... time without space... eternity... space without bounds... energy beyond imagination... and what do they do with their findings? Announce them at society dinners for plaques and the recordings of their names in the annals of history. No more than that!
But even so... the stream flows beyond our awareness. When a man tries to see into the distance, what does he do? He narrows his eyes. Even with your eyes opened as wide they will go, you cannot perceive something so large that it is beyond the range of your vision.
The universe flows toward the ultimate conclusion. What is higher becomes lower... destiny grows thin... order seeks entropy... the ultimate trend toward the uniformity of all things is inevitable and irreversible. Men gather together as though they would reverse the cosmic steam, but in truth they are only driftwood.
Yet, even as the stream sweeps them along they possess one power capable of stopping the stream. When this power is used, the stream will stop for an instant... and then resume its course with doubled intensity.
When it is before them, people recognise the stream for what it is and fear its power, as you’ve already seen.
Look beyond form and consider substance.
Akira is not in the stream.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2019
What happened to this series? Just when I started coming to terms with Akira not caring about either a thought-through plot or in-depth character development, the series just took a few pleasantly surprising turns that made this my favorite volume so far.
Remember how Akira has gotten his powers back in the last Volume and casually caused another massive destruction of Neo-Tokyo with which aftermath we are now dealing with. The city is now cut off from the rest of the world and with Akira its king and Tetsuo its mad prime minister, the world we are witnessing is turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.
It's a lot creepier than its predecessors. I can't even quite tell what it is - maybe it's the fact that we are introduced to a lot of new people and groups that just aren't as black and white as the good and the bad guys had been in the story so far. People we would have thought of as "normal" show signs of being manipulated, brainwashed or just in the process of going insane.
Here comes the world building I was so desperately waiting for. We learn more about the experiments that have been tried on the bearer of superpowers, how Lady Miyako might be the one to save everyone and the boring mean guy Tetsuo becomes not only a more disgusting prick, but also more interesting by having a intriguing hallucination and afterwards trying to control his drug-addiction. And I'm enjoying Kei a lot, too! Always here for a female hero.
I'm excited about this series again after having had quite neutral feelings about it for a little run now. Off to the next volume. After the change in pace and narrative, I wonder which direction this will go into now.
Remember how Akira has gotten his powers back in the last Volume and casually caused another massive destruction of Neo-Tokyo with which aftermath we are now dealing with. The city is now cut off from the rest of the world and with Akira its king and Tetsuo its mad prime minister, the world we are witnessing is turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.
It's a lot creepier than its predecessors. I can't even quite tell what it is - maybe it's the fact that we are introduced to a lot of new people and groups that just aren't as black and white as the good and the bad guys had been in the story so far. People we would have thought of as "normal" show signs of being manipulated, brainwashed or just in the process of going insane.
Here comes the world building I was so desperately waiting for. We learn more about the experiments that have been tried on the bearer of superpowers, how Lady Miyako might be the one to save everyone and the boring mean guy Tetsuo becomes not only a more disgusting prick, but also more interesting by having a intriguing hallucination and afterwards trying to control his drug-addiction. And I'm enjoying Kei a lot, too! Always here for a female hero.
I'm excited about this series again after having had quite neutral feelings about it for a little run now. Off to the next volume. After the change in pace and narrative, I wonder which direction this will go into now.
September 9, 2019
You can find my review on my blog by clicking here.
It has been over 30 years since Katsuhiro Otomo has stunned the world with his visionary six-volume manga, which also gave birth to one of the best animated movies of all time of the same name. By not only reforming the way stories are told through this medium, whether it is through the characters, the world-building or the artwork, he successfully creates a post-apocalyptic science-fiction filled with action, suspense, thrill, philosophy, religion, and insanity. While the first volumes were focused on building his universe and in meticulously teasing the reader by sending them on a rollercoaster of questions with no answers, this fourth entry sets its eyes on exploring civilization built from ground up, with the birth of religious concepts and beliefs in people, as they try and understand the world they live in.
What is Akira (Vol. 4) about? Following the tragedy that besets Neo-Tokyo at the end of the previous volume, the story now explores the city in ruin ruled by a godlike telekinetic superhuman child with the psychic juggernaut Tetsuo by his side as they establish the Great Tokyo Empire with fanatic acolytes ready to do anything for their ruler. In the meanwhile, several different rebel legions concoct a plan to stop Akira from maintaining absolute control over humanity and the answer seems to lie in the mysterious Lady Miyako who holds the key to everything. Through a myriad of revelations, the story thus trusts forward with engrossing theological ideas and delivers one of the best story arcs in this classic masterpiece.
This is exactly what I expected from this franchise and I’m delighted to see it so perfectly executed in this installment. With the ending in the previous volume, it was almost impossible to see where mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo would henceforth possibly go with the story. Thankfully, he begins the story as if he had hit the reset button on mankind while mysteriously keeping a couple of characters alive. With some incredible ideas based on religion and philosophy, he presents the established cults that now rule the city as well as the status of each individual within this society, from the one who plays God to those who worship him out of fear. Subtlety he also explores the lack of women and the sexual impulses of men hungry for pleasure and who would do anything to get what they want. The exploration of drugs and there use to repress our development is also brilliantly employed within the science-fiction context of this story. Simply said, mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo does an incredible job in taking the best elements of his series so far and clearly conveys awe-inspiring ideas but with all the chaos and destruction that he is known to incorporate in his franchise.
If you thought this would turn out to be another volume where there would be more questions than answers, think again. For once, this volume starts off by tossing the reader into a bottomless abyss as they try to figure out where they are and what is going. As the story progresses, several characters appear and the answers are gently handed over, exposing the history behind a lot of the stories supernatural elements, while maintaining a certain hallucinogenic and religious connotation that makes the ride trippy from cover to cover. In fact, the artwork sustains mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo’s incredible ability to draw the setting in all of its splendour, while still dragging the story through a chaotic slaughter that illustrates the epic scale destruction that comes with the bloodbath and gore. The attention to detail and the way each panel is drawn also allows for such an incredibly fast-paced adventure where the tension is constantly high and rising. While it is the fattest volume so far, the amount of dialogue is still relatively low yet so significantly absorbing and engaging.
Akira (Vol. 4) is a thought-provoking tour de force that revolutionizes the medium as it provides a devastating yet gorgeous portrayal of mankind’s rebirth and own undoing.
Yours truly,
Lashaan | Blogger and Book Reviewer
Official blog: https://bookidote.com/
June 24, 2024
Eu comecei a ler essa HQ deitado, lá pelas páginas 200 e pouco eu estava naquela posição gamer corcunda de quanto você toma gol no fifa, de tão vidrado que eu estava.
Falar dos desenhos do Otomo no quarto volume é chover no molhado, então nem vou me aprofundar nisso, mas que arte ESPETACULAR DE ABSURDO, é barbaridade o que esse homem produziu na década de 80.
No que tange a história, nessa edição quem ganha destaque é a Kei, que tem uma difícil missão de levar uma das crianças até o templo da Sacerdotisa em um cenário apocalíptico pós "bomba nuclear". E sim, bomba nuclear entre aspas, porque não foi exatamente isso, mas da para sacar que é uma clara alusão as bombas nucleares da segunda guerra mundial.
O cenário de devastação e caos é muito bem trabalhado por otomo, destacando o machismo, a escassez de recurso, a dominação por meio da religião e por meio do poder, bem como todo o caos no quesito da lei e organização social. Você sente com os personagens toda a desordem e o sentimento de "e agora? o que vamos fazer com tudo destruído?"
Como mencionei anteriormente, a Kei ganha maior parte do destaque aqui, mas também somos conduzidos durante um momento pela Tia, que é uma mulher bombada com uma metralhadora, simplesmente incrível.
Também temos mais desenvolvimento no núcleo do Tetsuo e Akira, que foi absurdamente bom. Eu achei que estava entendendo os poderes do Tetsuo, mas na verdade, a trama teve reviravoltas espetaculares, que mostraram que tudo pode mudar e que não temos ainda a mínima noção dos poderes do Tetsuo e nem o quão poderoso o Akira é.
Falar dos desenhos do Otomo no quarto volume é chover no molhado, então nem vou me aprofundar nisso, mas que arte ESPETACULAR DE ABSURDO, é barbaridade o que esse homem produziu na década de 80.
No que tange a história, nessa edição quem ganha destaque é a Kei, que tem uma difícil missão de levar uma das crianças até o templo da Sacerdotisa em um cenário apocalíptico pós "bomba nuclear". E sim, bomba nuclear entre aspas, porque não foi exatamente isso, mas da para sacar que é uma clara alusão as bombas nucleares da segunda guerra mundial.
O cenário de devastação e caos é muito bem trabalhado por otomo, destacando o machismo, a escassez de recurso, a dominação por meio da religião e por meio do poder, bem como todo o caos no quesito da lei e organização social. Você sente com os personagens toda a desordem e o sentimento de "e agora? o que vamos fazer com tudo destruído?"
Como mencionei anteriormente, a Kei ganha maior parte do destaque aqui, mas também somos conduzidos durante um momento pela Tia, que é uma mulher bombada com uma metralhadora, simplesmente incrível.
Também temos mais desenvolvimento no núcleo do Tetsuo e Akira, que foi absurdamente bom. Eu achei que estava entendendo os poderes do Tetsuo, mas na verdade, a trama teve reviravoltas espetaculares, que mostraram que tudo pode mudar e que não temos ainda a mínima noção dos poderes do Tetsuo e nem o quão poderoso o Akira é.
March 21, 2024
This one might as well be the best volume so far, in story, action and artwork!
April 16, 2025
I strive to be like Chiyoko
February 28, 2023
Claramente la obra de Akira entra en su segunda parte, en el cuál pasa del más puro ciberpunk a un manga apocalíptico donde vemos como se dividen bandos donde ambos intentan sobrevivir aunque de distintas maneras.
También vemos una evolución más que interesante en Tetsuo y, para que negarlo, el final de este volumen consigue dejarte con la boca abierta como el anterior.
¿Qué tendrá preparado el mangaka mientras se va acercando el inevitable final de esta historia? No se puede decir que ahora mismo Akira sea muy predecible por lo que toca seguir disfrutando de esta obra maestra.
También vemos una evolución más que interesante en Tetsuo y, para que negarlo, el final de este volumen consigue dejarte con la boca abierta como el anterior.
¿Qué tendrá preparado el mangaka mientras se va acercando el inevitable final de esta historia? No se puede decir que ahora mismo Akira sea muy predecible por lo que toca seguir disfrutando de esta obra maestra.
December 8, 2019
[Comics Canon Review]
I had forgotten that Akira takes this additional major turn beyond what the film version retells. This volume begins a stunning and brutal second part to the story and has a much stronger socio-political point of view.
In the aftermath of the prior volume’s climax, Tokyo is returned again to ruin and is isolated from the outside world. The survivors band together into two groups, each with a religious cult leader at its head: one group pledged to violence, the other to healing and sheltering the wounded. Psychic abilities begin appearing in others and lead to gruesome conflicts between the two groups.
What had been a gritty near-future tale in the first three volumes shifts gears in this fourth volume toward even darker conditions. The cyberpunk tone of the earlier volumes gives way to a Mad Max-like nihilism that plays out in and among civilization’s ruins. This book is bleak and horribly violent, but its characters become more complicated and interesting in the process. The action sequences are well-earned and serve the drama, rather than the other way around.
A great read.
I had forgotten that Akira takes this additional major turn beyond what the film version retells. This volume begins a stunning and brutal second part to the story and has a much stronger socio-political point of view.
In the aftermath of the prior volume’s climax, Tokyo is returned again to ruin and is isolated from the outside world. The survivors band together into two groups, each with a religious cult leader at its head: one group pledged to violence, the other to healing and sheltering the wounded. Psychic abilities begin appearing in others and lead to gruesome conflicts between the two groups.
What had been a gritty near-future tale in the first three volumes shifts gears in this fourth volume toward even darker conditions. The cyberpunk tone of the earlier volumes gives way to a Mad Max-like nihilism that plays out in and among civilization’s ruins. This book is bleak and horribly violent, but its characters become more complicated and interesting in the process. The action sequences are well-earned and serve the drama, rather than the other way around.
A great read.
October 3, 2025
Akira, Vol. 4 is the point at which the manga transcends its origins as a kinetic cyberpunk thriller and begins to operate as something far more elemental, a myth of apocalypse and rebirth told in images of staggering intensity.
The previous volume concluded with Neo-Tokyo in ruins, a crater where the city once stood, the explosion of psychic energy having annihilated not only buildings and armies but also the very sense of continuity with the world that came before. In Volume 4, the story does not move back toward restoration but further into the abyss, and in that abyss Otomo conjures a new, frighteningly open terrain where cults, warlords, children, and fragments of institutions scrabble for meaning under the shadow of Akira.
Reading this volume is like watching the laws of both narrative and civilization break down. The city is no longer a cyberpunk sprawl of neon lights and authoritarian bureaucracy; it is a wasteland. Its ruins echo Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also postwar Tokyo, and beyond that, every civilization that has collapsed into myth. Otomo draws the wreckage with obsessive, almost loving detail, as though he is inscribing the anatomy of apocalypse: each twisted beam, each slab of shattered concrete, each derelict skyscraper standing like a tombstone.
But this is not static devastation. Out of the ruins, new forms of life sprout — not the comforting green shoots of natural recovery, but darker forms of social improvisation: cults worshipping Akira as a messiah, militias enforcing brutal law, scavengers surviving at the margins, and a fragile political machinery of remnants trying to reassert order. It is in this vacuum of authority that Akira and Tetsuo emerge as gravitational centres, drawing the hopes and terrors of survivors into their orbits.
Akira, the silent boy at the centre of it all, finally begins to reveal his presence as something more than a cipher. His muteness, his blank expression, his eerie stillness — these have always made him uncanny, but in this volume they become the qualities of divinity. He is no longer just a weapon or a lab experiment; he is a void onto which the broken survivors project meaning.
The cultists who gather around him embody the human compulsion to worship, to translate trauma into transcendence. In their fervent processions, in the way they chant his name, one sees not only desperation but the raw birth of religion. Otomo seems to be suggesting that in moments of civilizational collapse, the instinct to deify the incomprehensible remains as powerful as hunger or fear. Akira becomes less a character than an axis of faith, and this elevation of the boy to the status of messiah is one of the most chilling shifts in the series.
Tetsuo, by contrast, is a different kind of god: volatile, grotesque, intoxicated by power. Volume 4 deepens his transformation, showing his body and mind fraying under the strain of psychic energy. His physical mutations become more pronounced, his psyche more unstable, his relationship with Akira more ambiguous — oscillating between rivalry, brotherhood, and co-messiahship. Unlike Akira’s terrifying silence, Tetsuo is noise incarnate: arrogant, defiant, unstable.
He embodies the nightmare of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the human who seizes godlike power without the moral or emotional foundation to wield it. And yet Otomo never lets us forget Tetsuo’s fragility: he is still, beneath the cosmic mutations, a boy terrified of weakness, of being left behind, of being lesser than Kaneda. His addiction to power is at once monstrous and heartbreakingly human.
Kaneda himself resurfaces here with his trademark swagger. If Tetsuo is the corruption of power and Akira is the silent void of faith, Kaneda is the stubborn pulse of raw humanity. He is reckless, immature, quick to mock, unwilling to bow before either cultists or colonels. Yet his defiance has an existential weight: in a world sliding toward fatalism and fanaticism, Kaneda insists on being human, on fighting, on refusing awe. His confrontations with Tetsuo are the emotional heart of the story. They are not just brawls between childhood friends but emblematic struggles between humanity and corruption, between loyalty and betrayal, between the human will and the intoxication of inhuman power. Kaneda, with his imperfections intact, becomes a strange sort of anchor — the reminder that, even in a myth of apocalypse, ordinary flawed humanity can still matter.
Colonel Shikishima, the other major figure in this desolate landscape, also takes on new dimensions. Earlier presented as the blunt force of military authority, he now reveals himself as both oppressor and caretaker. He remains ruthless, willing to deploy violence without hesitation, but beneath his authoritarian exterior lies a genuine sense of responsibility for the psychic children, for the remnants of civilization, even for Akira. He is one of Otomo’s most complex creations: a soldier who embodies both the machinery of oppression and the possibility of paternal protection. His role in Volume 4 feels almost tragic — a man trying to impose order upon entropy, knowing he is fighting a losing battle, yet unable to surrender.
The interplay between these four poles — Akira’s divinity, Tetsuo’s corruption, Kaneda’s humanity, and the Colonel’s paternal authoritarianism — gives Volume 4 its immense thematic depth. They are not simply characters in a narrative; they are archetypes, forces of myth, playing out an apocalypse that is as psychological and spiritual as it is physical.
Visually, Otomo achieves nothing less than operatic grandeur in this volume. The ruined city is a stage for mythic confrontations. Panels alternate between silence and chaos: vast wide shots of desolate wasteland, broken skyscrapers looming like gravestones, are punctuated by frenetic sequences of violence, psychic eruptions that distort the page itself with lines of energy and grotesque transformations. His use of scale is extraordinary: a tiny human figure against the cavernous ruins, or a crowd of cultists dwarfed by the boy they worship. The balance between obsessive detail and stark emptiness mirrors the themes of collapse and rebirth. Otomo’s draftsmanship is not just illustration; it is architecture, choreography, and philosophy, inscribed in ink.
Beyond its immediate narrative, Akira, Vol. 4 resonates with broader cultural and historical anxieties. Published in the late 1980s, it carries the unmistakable shadow of the Cold War and Japan’s own postwar trauma. The psychic explosion that destroyed Neo-Tokyo is a clear analogue of the atomic bombings, and the devastated landscape echoes the ruins of Hiroshima. But unlike earlier Japanese works that emphasized pacifism or victimhood, Otomo turns the imagery of devastation into something more ambiguous, almost seductive. The wasteland is terrifying, but it is also a blank slate, a place where new mythologies and new social forms can be written. In this sense, Akira resonates not just with post-Hiroshima trauma but with the broader late-20th-century anxiety about apocalypse as both end and beginning.
There is also a clear dialogue with religious myth. Akira as silent messiah, Tetsuo as corrupted demigod, Kaneda as rebellious mortal — these are archetypes found across cultures, from Christian eschatology to Buddhist cycles of destruction and rebirth. The cults that form around Akira mirror real-world religious movements that arise in times of catastrophe, when conventional structures collapse and humans reach for transcendence. Otomo’s portrayal of the cultists is both critical and empathetic: they are desperate, fanatical, absurd, yet recognizably human in their need for hope. In this way, Akira situates itself not only as cyberpunk but as myth, part of humanity’s oldest storytelling tradition — the attempt to make sense of devastation through narrative and ritual.
Western parallels further illuminate Otomo’s achievement. Like Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which was being published around the same time, Akira interrogates the nature of power and its corrosive effects. Like Mad Max, it imagines civilization collapsed into tribalism and warlordism. Like Children of Men, it explores the fragility of social order when faced with existential crisis. And like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which came later but was clearly indebted to Otomo’s vision, it fuses the imagery of apocalypse with psychological and religious allegory. But Akira is distinct in its refusal to provide catharsis. There are no heroes, no victories, no moral resolutions. Instead, Otomo offers entropy — the sense that everything is collapsing into mutation, and the only certainty is transformation itself.
By the end of Volume 4, the reader is left not with answers but with intensifying uncertainty. Alliances shift, battles erupt, psychic power continues to destabilize both body and world. The cult of Akira grows, Tetsuo mutates further, Kaneda fights on with reckless defiance, and the Colonel persists in his futile attempt to impose order. Nothing is resolved, but everything has deepened. The stakes are no longer about who controls Neo-Tokyo; they are about what humanity itself becomes when confronted with forces beyond comprehension.
This is why Akira, Vol. 4 feels monumental. It is not simply a continuation of a story but a redefinition of what the story is. The series has shifted fully from dystopian cyberpunk into apocalyptic myth, from politics into theology, from science fiction into allegory. Otomo achieves this shift not by abandoning his characters but by elevating them into archetypes, making them embody forces larger than themselves.
And yet, amidst all this grandeur, Otomo never lets go of the human texture. Kaneda’s wisecracks, Tetsuo’s insecurities, the Colonel’s weary determination, the cultists’ blind faith — these remind us that beneath the myth, there are still people. This interplay between mythic scale and human intimacy is what makes Akira extraordinary. It is not just about gods and apocalypse; it is about boys and soldiers, friends and enemies, fear and loyalty, hope and despair.
Otomo’s genius lies in making this all feel inevitable. The collapse of Neo-Tokyo, the rise of cults, the mutations of Tetsuo, the worship of Akira — none of it feels forced. It feels like the natural consequence of the forces unleashed in the earlier volumes. Civilization collapses, humans seek meaning, power corrupts, friendship mutates into rivalry. The apocalypse is not an external event; it is the unfolding of human nature under unbearable pressure.
In this sense, Akira, Vol. 4 is not just manga, not just science fiction, not just dystopia. It is myth-making at the scale of civilization. It is Otomo taking the fears of the late 20th century — nuclear war, technological overreach, loss of meaning — and refracting them through the lens of adolescence, power, and apocalypse. The result is something both particular to its moment and timeless in its resonance.
To read this volume is to be pulled into a narrative that is no longer about survival but about transformation. The ruins of Neo-Tokyo are not just the backdrop of the story but its subject: the collapse of one order and the terrifying, awe-inspiring birth of another. In Akira’s silence, in Tetsuo’s grotesque mutations, in Kaneda’s defiance, in the Colonel’s persistence, Otomo stages nothing less than the drama of humanity at the edge of its own self-destruction.
By the time one closes Volume 4, the sensation is not resolution but vertigo. The ground has given way. The story is no longer bounded by the genres it began in. It has become myth, and like all myths of apocalypse, it leaves us suspended between fear and fascination, destruction and rebirth. That is Otomo’s gift, and his curse: to show us that even in ruins, humanity cannot stop dreaming, worshipping, mutating, and fighting.
The previous volume concluded with Neo-Tokyo in ruins, a crater where the city once stood, the explosion of psychic energy having annihilated not only buildings and armies but also the very sense of continuity with the world that came before. In Volume 4, the story does not move back toward restoration but further into the abyss, and in that abyss Otomo conjures a new, frighteningly open terrain where cults, warlords, children, and fragments of institutions scrabble for meaning under the shadow of Akira.
Reading this volume is like watching the laws of both narrative and civilization break down. The city is no longer a cyberpunk sprawl of neon lights and authoritarian bureaucracy; it is a wasteland. Its ruins echo Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also postwar Tokyo, and beyond that, every civilization that has collapsed into myth. Otomo draws the wreckage with obsessive, almost loving detail, as though he is inscribing the anatomy of apocalypse: each twisted beam, each slab of shattered concrete, each derelict skyscraper standing like a tombstone.
But this is not static devastation. Out of the ruins, new forms of life sprout — not the comforting green shoots of natural recovery, but darker forms of social improvisation: cults worshipping Akira as a messiah, militias enforcing brutal law, scavengers surviving at the margins, and a fragile political machinery of remnants trying to reassert order. It is in this vacuum of authority that Akira and Tetsuo emerge as gravitational centres, drawing the hopes and terrors of survivors into their orbits.
Akira, the silent boy at the centre of it all, finally begins to reveal his presence as something more than a cipher. His muteness, his blank expression, his eerie stillness — these have always made him uncanny, but in this volume they become the qualities of divinity. He is no longer just a weapon or a lab experiment; he is a void onto which the broken survivors project meaning.
The cultists who gather around him embody the human compulsion to worship, to translate trauma into transcendence. In their fervent processions, in the way they chant his name, one sees not only desperation but the raw birth of religion. Otomo seems to be suggesting that in moments of civilizational collapse, the instinct to deify the incomprehensible remains as powerful as hunger or fear. Akira becomes less a character than an axis of faith, and this elevation of the boy to the status of messiah is one of the most chilling shifts in the series.
Tetsuo, by contrast, is a different kind of god: volatile, grotesque, intoxicated by power. Volume 4 deepens his transformation, showing his body and mind fraying under the strain of psychic energy. His physical mutations become more pronounced, his psyche more unstable, his relationship with Akira more ambiguous — oscillating between rivalry, brotherhood, and co-messiahship. Unlike Akira’s terrifying silence, Tetsuo is noise incarnate: arrogant, defiant, unstable.
He embodies the nightmare of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the human who seizes godlike power without the moral or emotional foundation to wield it. And yet Otomo never lets us forget Tetsuo’s fragility: he is still, beneath the cosmic mutations, a boy terrified of weakness, of being left behind, of being lesser than Kaneda. His addiction to power is at once monstrous and heartbreakingly human.
Kaneda himself resurfaces here with his trademark swagger. If Tetsuo is the corruption of power and Akira is the silent void of faith, Kaneda is the stubborn pulse of raw humanity. He is reckless, immature, quick to mock, unwilling to bow before either cultists or colonels. Yet his defiance has an existential weight: in a world sliding toward fatalism and fanaticism, Kaneda insists on being human, on fighting, on refusing awe. His confrontations with Tetsuo are the emotional heart of the story. They are not just brawls between childhood friends but emblematic struggles between humanity and corruption, between loyalty and betrayal, between the human will and the intoxication of inhuman power. Kaneda, with his imperfections intact, becomes a strange sort of anchor — the reminder that, even in a myth of apocalypse, ordinary flawed humanity can still matter.
Colonel Shikishima, the other major figure in this desolate landscape, also takes on new dimensions. Earlier presented as the blunt force of military authority, he now reveals himself as both oppressor and caretaker. He remains ruthless, willing to deploy violence without hesitation, but beneath his authoritarian exterior lies a genuine sense of responsibility for the psychic children, for the remnants of civilization, even for Akira. He is one of Otomo’s most complex creations: a soldier who embodies both the machinery of oppression and the possibility of paternal protection. His role in Volume 4 feels almost tragic — a man trying to impose order upon entropy, knowing he is fighting a losing battle, yet unable to surrender.
The interplay between these four poles — Akira’s divinity, Tetsuo’s corruption, Kaneda’s humanity, and the Colonel’s paternal authoritarianism — gives Volume 4 its immense thematic depth. They are not simply characters in a narrative; they are archetypes, forces of myth, playing out an apocalypse that is as psychological and spiritual as it is physical.
Visually, Otomo achieves nothing less than operatic grandeur in this volume. The ruined city is a stage for mythic confrontations. Panels alternate between silence and chaos: vast wide shots of desolate wasteland, broken skyscrapers looming like gravestones, are punctuated by frenetic sequences of violence, psychic eruptions that distort the page itself with lines of energy and grotesque transformations. His use of scale is extraordinary: a tiny human figure against the cavernous ruins, or a crowd of cultists dwarfed by the boy they worship. The balance between obsessive detail and stark emptiness mirrors the themes of collapse and rebirth. Otomo’s draftsmanship is not just illustration; it is architecture, choreography, and philosophy, inscribed in ink.
Beyond its immediate narrative, Akira, Vol. 4 resonates with broader cultural and historical anxieties. Published in the late 1980s, it carries the unmistakable shadow of the Cold War and Japan’s own postwar trauma. The psychic explosion that destroyed Neo-Tokyo is a clear analogue of the atomic bombings, and the devastated landscape echoes the ruins of Hiroshima. But unlike earlier Japanese works that emphasized pacifism or victimhood, Otomo turns the imagery of devastation into something more ambiguous, almost seductive. The wasteland is terrifying, but it is also a blank slate, a place where new mythologies and new social forms can be written. In this sense, Akira resonates not just with post-Hiroshima trauma but with the broader late-20th-century anxiety about apocalypse as both end and beginning.
There is also a clear dialogue with religious myth. Akira as silent messiah, Tetsuo as corrupted demigod, Kaneda as rebellious mortal — these are archetypes found across cultures, from Christian eschatology to Buddhist cycles of destruction and rebirth. The cults that form around Akira mirror real-world religious movements that arise in times of catastrophe, when conventional structures collapse and humans reach for transcendence. Otomo’s portrayal of the cultists is both critical and empathetic: they are desperate, fanatical, absurd, yet recognizably human in their need for hope. In this way, Akira situates itself not only as cyberpunk but as myth, part of humanity’s oldest storytelling tradition — the attempt to make sense of devastation through narrative and ritual.
Western parallels further illuminate Otomo’s achievement. Like Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which was being published around the same time, Akira interrogates the nature of power and its corrosive effects. Like Mad Max, it imagines civilization collapsed into tribalism and warlordism. Like Children of Men, it explores the fragility of social order when faced with existential crisis. And like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which came later but was clearly indebted to Otomo’s vision, it fuses the imagery of apocalypse with psychological and religious allegory. But Akira is distinct in its refusal to provide catharsis. There are no heroes, no victories, no moral resolutions. Instead, Otomo offers entropy — the sense that everything is collapsing into mutation, and the only certainty is transformation itself.
By the end of Volume 4, the reader is left not with answers but with intensifying uncertainty. Alliances shift, battles erupt, psychic power continues to destabilize both body and world. The cult of Akira grows, Tetsuo mutates further, Kaneda fights on with reckless defiance, and the Colonel persists in his futile attempt to impose order. Nothing is resolved, but everything has deepened. The stakes are no longer about who controls Neo-Tokyo; they are about what humanity itself becomes when confronted with forces beyond comprehension.
This is why Akira, Vol. 4 feels monumental. It is not simply a continuation of a story but a redefinition of what the story is. The series has shifted fully from dystopian cyberpunk into apocalyptic myth, from politics into theology, from science fiction into allegory. Otomo achieves this shift not by abandoning his characters but by elevating them into archetypes, making them embody forces larger than themselves.
And yet, amidst all this grandeur, Otomo never lets go of the human texture. Kaneda’s wisecracks, Tetsuo’s insecurities, the Colonel’s weary determination, the cultists’ blind faith — these remind us that beneath the myth, there are still people. This interplay between mythic scale and human intimacy is what makes Akira extraordinary. It is not just about gods and apocalypse; it is about boys and soldiers, friends and enemies, fear and loyalty, hope and despair.
Otomo’s genius lies in making this all feel inevitable. The collapse of Neo-Tokyo, the rise of cults, the mutations of Tetsuo, the worship of Akira — none of it feels forced. It feels like the natural consequence of the forces unleashed in the earlier volumes. Civilization collapses, humans seek meaning, power corrupts, friendship mutates into rivalry. The apocalypse is not an external event; it is the unfolding of human nature under unbearable pressure.
In this sense, Akira, Vol. 4 is not just manga, not just science fiction, not just dystopia. It is myth-making at the scale of civilization. It is Otomo taking the fears of the late 20th century — nuclear war, technological overreach, loss of meaning — and refracting them through the lens of adolescence, power, and apocalypse. The result is something both particular to its moment and timeless in its resonance.
To read this volume is to be pulled into a narrative that is no longer about survival but about transformation. The ruins of Neo-Tokyo are not just the backdrop of the story but its subject: the collapse of one order and the terrifying, awe-inspiring birth of another. In Akira’s silence, in Tetsuo’s grotesque mutations, in Kaneda’s defiance, in the Colonel’s persistence, Otomo stages nothing less than the drama of humanity at the edge of its own self-destruction.
By the time one closes Volume 4, the sensation is not resolution but vertigo. The ground has given way. The story is no longer bounded by the genres it began in. It has become myth, and like all myths of apocalypse, it leaves us suspended between fear and fascination, destruction and rebirth. That is Otomo’s gift, and his curse: to show us that even in ruins, humanity cannot stop dreaming, worshipping, mutating, and fighting.
January 3, 2020
Akira não tem condições. É realmente uma das melhores histórias em quadrinhos já feitas. Não bastasse o desenho extremamente alucinante do Katsuhiro Otomo, a história é praticamente uma epopeia contemporânea sobre a bomba nuclear e as mazelas da guerra. Esse volume 4, então, mostra como as seitas e o machismo andam junto na histeria coletiva num momento pós conflito armado e/ou nuclear. Tem muitos momentos aqui que me lembraram GEN - Pés descalços, e isso não é à toa. Também gostei muito da participação e do desenvolvimento das personagens mulheres até então, principalmente neste volume, que elas têm tanto destaque. Kei!!!!! Tia!!!!!!!!!!
October 24, 2021
Disturbante al massimo, incredibile quanto Otomo fosse avanti!
September 3, 2024
Лучше 3 тома, но минус за то, что Канеда только на последних 2 страницах появился
June 8, 2023
4.0 Stars. Akira was originally published in the US in 38 chapters, later collected into 6 volumes. Vol. 4 is chapters 17-23.
What happens in this volume:
The Good:
- Exposition: Prior to this volume very little has been explained regarding the events that happened prior to the books as well as how the rest of the world has reacted to learning of Akira's existence. This volume provides answers by temporarily taking Kaneda out of the story and focusing on side characters.
- Character Growth: With Kaneda gone, the story shifts it's focus to characters that have taken a backseat to Kaneda and Tetsuo's stories. Kei and the Colonel in particular are given their due. Their motivations become clearer.
The Bad:
- Kaneda's disappearance is not explained: Why was Kaneda the only one that disappeared? No one knows where he is and they assume he's dead. This in itself isn't bad at all because it gave Kei a chance to shine, but there isn't a satisfying explanation for it yet. Given the momentum of the plot at this point I'm not even certain this disappearance can or will be explained.
- Ryu: I don't understand this character yet. He obviously still has a role to play but it feels like he keeps showing up to remind the reader he is there so we don't forget him while the plot progresses. However, almost nothing about him has been revealed. Why should I care about Ryu? At this point I don't know.
I am really enjoying this manga and cannot wait to finish it. The plot is moving so fast, the action is nonstop, the story is intriguing and the characters are multifaceted. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone that struggles with hyperviolent content. There is also sexual assault that occurs which may bother some.
What happens in this volume:
The Good:
- Exposition: Prior to this volume very little has been explained regarding the events that happened prior to the books as well as how the rest of the world has reacted to learning of Akira's existence. This volume provides answers by temporarily taking Kaneda out of the story and focusing on side characters.
- Character Growth: With Kaneda gone, the story shifts it's focus to characters that have taken a backseat to Kaneda and Tetsuo's stories. Kei and the Colonel in particular are given their due. Their motivations become clearer.
The Bad:
- Kaneda's disappearance is not explained: Why was Kaneda the only one that disappeared? No one knows where he is and they assume he's dead. This in itself isn't bad at all because it gave Kei a chance to shine, but there isn't a satisfying explanation for it yet. Given the momentum of the plot at this point I'm not even certain this disappearance can or will be explained.
- Ryu: I don't understand this character yet. He obviously still has a role to play but it feels like he keeps showing up to remind the reader he is there so we don't forget him while the plot progresses. However, almost nothing about him has been revealed. Why should I care about Ryu? At this point I don't know.
I am really enjoying this manga and cannot wait to finish it. The plot is moving so fast, the action is nonstop, the story is intriguing and the characters are multifaceted. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone that struggles with hyperviolent content. There is also sexual assault that occurs which may bother some.
May 3, 2019
why does every volume have to leave me shattered like this?
December 27, 2020
Akira takes a serious turn in this volume, at last.
March 2, 2022
Pues tenemos el apocalipsis después del apocalipsis. No se cuantas veces se puede destruir una ciudad.
Salto cualitativo y narrativo, ahora tenemos un mundo destruido y aislado donde el salvajismo impera. Una facción de fanáticos comandados por el monstruo Tetsuo y sus secuaces imponen el terror y el resto.....bueno, el resto de nuestros protagonistas corren de un lado para el otro cargando con los niños especiales y tratando de entender lo que pasa. Muertes, violaciones, asesinatos...queda alguna esperanza para la humanidad?
Volumen de transición que, una vez más, remata a lo grande. Un final de nuevo apoteósico y la pregunta de que demonios puede más pasar. A estas alturas ya deberían de estar toso muertos.
Ausencia de Kaneda en este volumen aunque se adivina que volverá a ser protagonista.
Salto cualitativo y narrativo, ahora tenemos un mundo destruido y aislado donde el salvajismo impera. Una facción de fanáticos comandados por el monstruo Tetsuo y sus secuaces imponen el terror y el resto.....bueno, el resto de nuestros protagonistas corren de un lado para el otro cargando con los niños especiales y tratando de entender lo que pasa. Muertes, violaciones, asesinatos...queda alguna esperanza para la humanidad?
Volumen de transición que, una vez más, remata a lo grande. Un final de nuevo apoteósico y la pregunta de que demonios puede más pasar. A estas alturas ya deberían de estar toso muertos.
Ausencia de Kaneda en este volumen aunque se adivina que volverá a ser protagonista.
August 18, 2024
"The stream flows on beyond our awareness. When a man tries to see into the distance what does he do? He narrows his eyes. Even with your eyes opened as wide as they will go... You cannot perceive something so large that it is beyond the range of your vision. The universe flows toward the ultimate conclusion. What is higher becomes lower... Destiny grows thin... Order seeks entropy... The ultimate trend towards the uniformity of all things is inevitable and irreversible. Men gather together as though they would reverse the cosmic stream, but in truth they are only driftwood."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 18, 2020
Es una cosa muy loca cuando un autor consigue hacer un cómic post-apocalíptico que entonces tiene otro apocalipsis. ¿Eso es post-post-apocalipsis? No lo sé. Pero después del tercer volumen, Neo-Tokyo parece estar semi-inundada, no hay gobierno ni sociedad, sólo supervivientes agrupados en cultos en torno a Akira y a la anciana número 19. Y todo en ruinas.
No deja de pasmarme el grado de detalle y preciosismo de este cómic, y el ritmo frenético de la historia a pesar de llevar cientos de páginas. Pero bueno, ahí sigue a más y más. De momento, Akira no dice una palabra, todo lo dice la gente alrededor de él. Supongo que es lo que cada uno quiere que sea.
No deja de pasmarme el grado de detalle y preciosismo de este cómic, y el ritmo frenético de la historia a pesar de llevar cientos de páginas. Pero bueno, ahí sigue a más y más. De momento, Akira no dice una palabra, todo lo dice la gente alrededor de él. Supongo que es lo que cada uno quiere que sea.
December 29, 2022
Of all the Akira volumes I’ve read, this has by far been the best one. There was lots of action, beautifully drawn landscapes of the derelict neo-Tokyo, and much needed character and plot development. Lost a star because of a large amount of cuts from one character’s story to another and unfortunately some spelling/grammar errors which imagine are a result of translation.
February 4, 2019
Estoy confusa? Osea. ¿A dónde vamos a llegar? Porque yo ya no entiendo nada.
May 24, 2024
Top tier storytelling. I was completely immersed and captivated. Man, that’s good stuff.
April 20, 2019
this manga is incredible, so layered and complex and engaging.
the visuals are gorgeous!
I can't imagine where things will go, so much has already happened!
the visuals are gorgeous!
I can't imagine where things will go, so much has already happened!
September 10, 2023
São duas e meia da manhã e não sosseguei até terminar essa joça como pode
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