When Katsuhiro Otomo watched the first rush (or daily) of his classic post-apocalyptic sci-fi anime film Akira (1988), he went home and told his wife the film was a failure. The now-famous director, like many creatives, couldn’t foresee the impact his film would have on animation and film beyond Japan’s borders.

Akira is a landmark of animation and one of the most influential films of all time. Set in a dystopian future, the film follows the story of Kaneda—leader of a biker gang in the futuristic city of Neo-Tokyo.

The importance of friendship and camaraderie is emphasized quite a bit in Akira, in both the manga and the movie.

It has been noted that the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are catalysts for present-day apocalyptic thought, particularly in Japan where the bombings actually took place.

The cyberpunk comic “Akira” was the creation of Katsuhiro Otomo, whose manga, “Domu,” one of Weekly Young Magazine’s first series, featured children with dangerous psychic powers. “Akira” expanded that idea onto a much larger canvas — a post-World War III Neo-Tokyo — that was populated with revolutionaries, rioters, corrupt politicians, drug dealers and biker gangs.

A crack of thunder. Pulsing polyrhythmic percussion. The roar of a passing motorcycle. A haunting symphonic chorus.

When Katsuhiro Otomo began writing, drawing and serialising the cyberpunk manga Akira back in 1982, who could have known the bloody, mutative tremors he would blast through the world, to shape pop culture as we know it today. The 1988 film adaptation of Akira put anime on the global stage, unleashing a new era for the genre with mature story-telling and razor-sharp animation.