Has Akira Always Been a Cyberpunk Comic?

Martin De La Iglesia

doi:10.3390/arts7030032

Abstract

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, interest in the cyberpunk genre peaked in the Western world, perhaps most evidently when Terminator 2: Judgment Day became the highest-grossing film of 1991. It has been argued that the translation of Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s manga Akira into several European languages at just that time (into English beginning in 1988, into French, Italian, and Spanish beginning in 1990, and into German beginning in 1991) was no coincidence. In hindsight, cyberpunk tropes are easily identified in Akira to the extent that it is nowadays widely regarded as a classic cyberpunk comic. But has this always been the case? When Akira was first published in America and Europe, did readers see it as part of a wave of cyberpunk fiction? Did they draw the connections to previous works of the cyberpunk genre across different media that today seem obvious? In this paper, magazine reviews of Akira in English and German from the time when it first came out in these languages will be analysed in order to gauge the past readers’ genre awareness. The attribution of the cyberpunk label to Akira competed with others such as the post-apocalyptic, or science fiction in general. Alternatively, Akira was sometimes regarded as an exceptional, novel work that transcended genre boundaries. In contrast, reviewers of the Akira anime adaptation, which was released at roughly the same time as the manga in the West (1989 in Germany and the United States), more readily drew comparisons to other cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner.

Highlights

Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira was first published in the Japanese manga periodical, Young Magazine, from 1982 to 1990
The first edition in the Western world was the English translation by Epic, an imprint of American publisher Marvel, in 38 issues from 1988 to 1995 (De la Iglesia 2016)
In the wake of these foreign Akira editions, a considerable number of themed manga were translated into European languages, such as Masamune Shirow’s three titles, Appleseed, Dominion, and Ghost in the Shell, Masaomi Kanzaki’s Xenon, and Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita

Summary

Introduction

Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira was first published in the Japanese manga periodical, Young Magazine, from 1982 to 1990. Roger Sabin (2006), the success of Akira created a “fashionable template” which Western publishers tried to follow by selecting manga titles from the same genre for translation, which “had the benefit of co-opting manga into the tradition of SF comics in the USA and Europe”. From today’s perspective, Akira is regarded as cyberpunk—a genre that had its heyday just at the same time when Ōtomo’s manga was first published in the Western world. Was it identified as cyberpunk back ?

The Concept of Cyberpunk

Akira as Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s

Genre Designations in Magazine Reviews of Akira