Carlos Morales
Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo is busy bringing the classic anime to new and bigger platforms
This week at Anime Expo in Los Angeles Katsuhiro Otomo announced at a panel the continuation and expansion of the seminal Cyberpunk classic Akira. Otomo the creator of the original manga that ran from 1982-1990 in Young Magazine, revealed that not only will he direct a new anime series based more closely on the manga but that the show will be produced by Bandai Namco’s Sunrise, although other details have been less than forthcoming.
It was also announced at Anime Expo that a 4k remastering on Blu-ray for the original 1988 Akira animated movie will be released in Japan on April 24, 2020, with a western release, promised soon after. This will mark the first time the animated film, “Akira” which is set in a post-apocalyptic 2060 Tokyo and tells the story of a secret military project endangering Tokyo after it turns a biker gang member into a super-powered psychic psychopath, will be seen in 4k. The now-classic anime movie was the most expensive anime produced at the time, costing around $9 million (1.1 billion yen).
The news of the live-action Akira movie released date for May 2021 came as a surprise after years of rumor and conjecture have made the project feel like it would never happen. The Warner Bros film is to be directed by Taika Waititi and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. Waititi commented on the movie when he expressed interested in having “a broader adaptation of the books,” rather than a remake of the 1988 film.
Otomo also took this time at the Anime Expo to announce his latest project a new animated film produced by Sunrise titled “Orbital Era.” This new action-adventure movie written and directed by Otomo is set in the near future on a space colony under construction where a group of young boys who live on one of humanity’s earliest attempts to create a life for themselves among the stars. This film will be Otomo’s third, which includes 2004’s Steamboy, which took him 10 years to finish.
