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hypops 's review for:
Akira, Vol. 4
by Katsuhiro Otomo
[Comics Canon Review]
I had forgotten that Akira takes this additional major turn beyond what the film version retells. This volume begins a stunning and brutal second part to the story and has a much stronger socio-political point of view.
In the aftermath of the prior volume’s climax, Tokyo is returned again to ruin and is isolated from the outside world. The survivors band together into two groups, each with a religious cult leader at its head: one group pledged to violence, the other to healing and sheltering the wounded. Psychic abilities begin appearing in others and lead to gruesome conflicts between the two groups.
What had been a gritty near-future tale in the first three volumes shifts gears in this fourth volume toward even darker conditions. The cyberpunk tone of the earlier volumes gives way to a Mad Max-like nihilism that plays out in and among civilization’s ruins. This book is bleak and horribly violent, but its characters become more complicated and interesting in the process. The action sequences are well-earned and serve the drama, rather than the other way around.
A great read.
I had forgotten that Akira takes this additional major turn beyond what the film version retells. This volume begins a stunning and brutal second part to the story and has a much stronger socio-political point of view.
In the aftermath of the prior volume’s climax, Tokyo is returned again to ruin and is isolated from the outside world. The survivors band together into two groups, each with a religious cult leader at its head: one group pledged to violence, the other to healing and sheltering the wounded. Psychic abilities begin appearing in others and lead to gruesome conflicts between the two groups.
What had been a gritty near-future tale in the first three volumes shifts gears in this fourth volume toward even darker conditions. The cyberpunk tone of the earlier volumes gives way to a Mad Max-like nihilism that plays out in and among civilization’s ruins. This book is bleak and horribly violent, but its characters become more complicated and interesting in the process. The action sequences are well-earned and serve the drama, rather than the other way around.
A great read.