Introduction

Abstract

Despite an initially lukewarm reception by critics and audiences when it was first released in June 1982, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner has gone on to become one of the most influential cyberpunk films of all time. It is no exaggeration to say that Blade Runner has come to serve as a sort of touchstone for what has come to be associated with the terms “cyberpunk” and “posthumanism,” anticipating to an uncanny degree the numerous issues explored by science fiction novels, films, manga, and anime that have followed in its wake. Halfway around the world, roughly contemporaneous with Blade Runner’s release, was the debut of another cyberpunk classic, a Japanese manga that was serialized in Young Magazine (Yangu Magajin) from December 20, 1982, until June 25, 1990: Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s manga powerhouse, AKIRA. Long before the animated AKIRA was released in 1988, the manga version held sway as one of the most complex cyberpunk visual narratives ever created. More than two thousand pages in length, the AKIRA manga is a prodigious work truly worthy of the term “graphic novel,” and its achievement many would say has yet to be surpassed. That its impact continues to be felt today is suggested by the fanfare surrounding Warner Brothers’ signing and development of a two-film live-action adaptation of the manga that is slated to be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and released in the near future.KeywordsPearl HarborAdvanced CapitalismBlade RunnerAsset Price BubbleMutant ChildThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.