Product Description

Tetsuo, an angry young man with immense psychic abilities, has released Akira from his frozen stasis and set in motion a chain of events that could destroy the city and drag the world to the brink of Armageddon. Resistance agents and an armada of government forces race against the clock to find the child with godlike powers before his unthinkable destructive abilities are unleashed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18593 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-25
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From the Back Cover
From master storyteller Katsuhiro Otomo, Japan's foremost manga maestro, comes the third epic instalment of the sweeping work that introduced the West to the stylised and dynamic artform that is manga - Akira!

Neo-Tokyo has risen from the rubble of a Tokyo destroyed by an apocalyptic blast from a boy called Akira - the subject of a covert government experiment gone wrong, now imprisoned in frozen stasis. But Tetsudo, an angry young man with immense psychic abilities, has released Akira and set in motion a chain of events that could destroy the city and drag the world to the point of Armageddon. Resistance agents and an armada of government forces race against the clock to find the child with godlike powers before his unthinkable destructive abilities are unleashed!

About the Author
Katsuhiro Otomo is one of the most respected and influential Japanese storytellers in the history of modern comics, and - apart from Akira - his work includes Domu and The Legend of Mother Sarah.

Customer Reviews

Unbelievable storytelling
Katsuhiro Otomo remains almost impossible to fault as both an artists or writer. Akira Volume 3 is absolutely brilliant - and I ain't just writing enthusiastically.

This volume, again, changes its manner of narrative. It's the shortest volume, moving at a faster pace, with far more time denoted to the current situation that characters find themselves in, rather than aiming to complicate the plot.

True, various actions go unexplained and new characters appear, but Katsuhiro aims to end the first stage of the story and and begin afresh in the next volume. He does this with amazing skill.

This is perhaps the most enjoyable novel of the series: with plenty of humour in the early sections and plentiful action. Like all the volumes it ends on a note of fear, uncertainty and absolute devastation. The artwork in the the last pages is famous and deserves to be. It is astonishing how Katsuhiro boxes, shapes and moulds his narrative. It is seamless, with characters moving in and out easily. The story is also thrilling, thanks to the drawing, the incident's themselves and how the pictures are fitted together on the page.

Furthermore, it becomes clear in this volume that while the themes of politics, the role of the military and science are important to the overall thrust of this saga, it is fundamentally a human drama, about how cataclysmic events impact on people's everyday lives.

If you've just skipped most of the preceeding blurb to read the final comment, here it is: AKIRA remains unparalled in the world of graphic fiction - go and by it all now.

Awesome!
This is the third volume in Katsuhiro Otomo's awesome, epic Akira series. Set in Neo-Tokyo, it follows two Japanese youths, Kaneda and Tetsuo, who get wrapped up in the unraveling of a conspiracy that destroyed Tokyo and started World War III. The mysterious and dangerous Akira.

To sum this series up in a paragraph is pointless. This is quite simply the greatest graphic novel ever written. The artwork is consistently stunning with a movie like quality while the story is compelling and draws the reader in. If you have any vague interest in Japenses manga, comics in general or the film you must get all six volumes of this brilliant series.

The best graphic novel ever.
The first two volumes of this series were good but I felt they were eclipsed by the film a bit. Vol.3 however goes beyond the anime and delivers 300 pages of the most intense, pulsating and spectacular story you're ever likely to read. In terms of sheer enjoyment this book surpasses such classics as From Hell, Preacher, Sandman and Watchmen, it is quite simply the best graphic novel (or book for that matter) ever produced!