Akira: Book 3
No. 3 in the Akira series
by Katsuhiro Otomo
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Dark Horse Manga (Milwaukie, Oregon): June 2001. Trade paperback: 359 pages. ISBN-10: 1-56971-525-4 Suggested retail price: $24.95 (US) Tags: drugs; gangs; Graphic Novel; guns; Japan; made into movie; Manga; motorcycles; Tokyo Tactical strength: [7/10] |
Once the military's biggest secret research project, Akira has awakened, and all the various groups want to have control of the little boy named Akira. Kaneda and Kei want to deliver Akira to the resistance leaders. Lady Miyako, a spiritual leader and number 19 from the same project as Akira, sends a team of teenage martial artists who also have telekinetic powers to abduct Akira. And, the Colonel has declared martial law and has the army and caretaker robots searching the city for Akira. Throughout Book 3, Akira passes hands from one group to another like a hot potato, and at the end all three groups converge. Up to this point, Akira hasn't uttered a single word, but when a stray bullet kills Takashi (number 26), Akira lets out a horrific cry of pain and remorse, which leads to Akira unleashing another destructive force just like 30 years before. Once again, Akira destroys a huge chunk of Neo-Tokyo.
Otomo continues with the same level of highly detailed artwork. As a westerner, I keep trying to identify the good guys and the bad guys in this story. A general assumption would make the Colonel the bad guy and Kaneda and his friends the good guys, but I think good guys and bad guys don't necessarily fit in with Otomo's complex plot. Clearly, Book 3 delves into the political connections between the groups. In later books, we learn more about Lady Miyako's desire to control Akira, but her desire for Akira in this book remains mostly unexplained.
In reading this book, I started to wonder why children play such a huge role in Otomo's story line. Akira is a child. The other "children" from Akira's series also look like children, although in the story they would be over forty years old. Kaneda, Kaneda's gang, and the other rival gangs are all adolescents. And, Lady Miyako's three henchmen are all children. One could possibly interpret the contrast between young and old characters as an embodiment of old ways competing with new ways. Clearly, Otomo has humans evolving to beings with telekinetic powers, and perhaps the children represent the change to this new form. I could make varying arguments to support this and other interpretations, but I think using children comes down to a decision of artistic freedom. Children react more impulsively than most adults, so sudden rages, doggedly pursuing a lover or an enemy, or blurting out the first thing that comes to mind work when demonstrated by children. These same activities in an adult might seem neurotic or even unreasonable, and children give Otomo a way to have impulsive characters without having to provide much justification.
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Akira directed by Katsuhiro Otomo
