A review by nolansmock
Akira, Vol. 6 by Katsuhiro Otomo

4.0

I read this in a day after finishing volume five yesterday. I started the series a year-and-a-half-ago and couldn't draw it out any longer. It's hard to believe it was released over the course of eight years but I wanted to experience it at a slower pace because of that. As expected, everything goes off the rails in the final volume although not really in the ways I expected. The biggest takeaway I have, one that comes up a lot when reading manga, is that the US really traumatized the f**k out of Japan in WWII! Down to Akira sharing the name of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, this series is about the human capacity for destruction and everything society has built around it, about a generation born into a world reduced to rubble by those that came before.

Like a lot of long-running manga series, the ending is very symbolic, with

Spoiler

all the characters and some ghosts riding off into the sunset. It was a little more ambiguous than I would've liked but I don't really know how else you end this story. It would've been cool to see more of a prologue instead of ending abrubtly after the main conflict. It almost cheapens the action by not acknowledging the consequences. We already saw how this plays out in previous volumes so it doesn't give us much reason to be hopeful despite its optimistic final chapter.

. I also couldn't help but think of just recently watching Fast X, how a little racing crew suddenly became superheroes ready to save the world. This was just a bratty motorcycle gang in the first volume! What a trip.