morning. When Otomo began production on the anime film adaptation of Akira, he said the manga had a weekly schedule of 20 pages a week. So he hired a second assistant to help, and occasionally brought in a third just to handle the screentone. "When the manga deadline drew near, we’d pull several all-nighters, then I’d walk right into the anime studio the day after." Manga artist and film director Satoshi Kon was an uncredited assistant on the series. The image model for the character Akira was Shōryū from Saiyūki (1960). Otomo liked his sorrowful expression and used him as a reference after deciding to make Akira a child. While editing his film Jiyū wo Warera ni, Otomo would often hear someone in the studio next door yell "Akira!", which he took to be the name of the assistant director. Because in the film industry the name "Akira" is often used to refer to Akira Kurosawa, Otomo "thought that gap" was funny and decided to use the name in his work one day. The character names Tetsuo and Kaneda, and the Espers' codenames of Nos. 25–28, were taken from Tetsujin 28-go. Kaneda's iconic motorcycle from the manga had no specific design. So Otomo said it came out "kind of random" and changed every time he drew it. The character Chiyoko was originally designed to be an old man, but Otomo felt that was too ordinary and "a little boring" and came up with the idea for an old lady, which then became a large old lady. The character grew on him as he drew and she ended up with a greater role than he originally planned. The logo for the manga changed several times throughout its serialization, including switching between Japanese and English. The first 35 chapters used katakana in the font Thick Textbook, chosen by Otomo for its ease of understanding and impact. After getting tired of this logo and having entered "Chapter 2" a few chapters previously, he used English in Broadway for chapter 36 because he wanted an Art Deco feel. However, Otomo did not like it when he saw the magazine and for chapters 37–48 he changed the font to a different Art Deco-style and wrote his name in English as "OHTOMO KATSUHIRO". Otomo was often drawing Art Deco-styled skyscrapers on the title pages at this time, but that stopped when Neo Tokyo is destroyed in