Is there a meaning/message behind Akira?


Is there some hidden meaning/message in
[Akira](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29)?

Does it have something to do with the scars left in the Japanese by the
bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And ultimately...

> is Akira the A-Bomb?

Or is there another deeper meaning than the one depicted in the movie?




The manga is far more informative than the movie. The movie seemed to adapt
the first two and the last volumes for its content, without really bothering
to explain anything about who characters were and where they came from.

The [manga](http://akira.wikia.com/wiki/Akira_%28Manga%29), begins with a
nuclear blast that destroy Tokyo and triggers World War III.

> It turns out that it wasn't a bomb, but Akira that caused the blast. Much of
> the plot of the first half of the manga concerns attempts by the military-
> industrial complex to contain the power of Akira. The central plot device
> involved an experiment to create weaponized "psychic" children through
> neuro-surgery and pharmaceutical regimens. Akira was an experiment gone
> dangerously awry and the child is now kept deep underground (under Neo-
> Tokyo's Olympic Stadium) within a sort of giant high-tech freezer.

I believe that there is a taboo on overtly discussing the bomb that speaks to
a mediation between repression and remembrance. The memory of a nuclear attack
on one's own nation is a bit too vivid of a tragedy for many to face directly.
The author makes very good use of allegories to present a nuclear holocaust
through a _shounen_ type of juvenile and imaginative storytelling. This way, a
Japanese reader might be able to be drawn into a subject that would otherwise
provoke repulsion, or at least unease and anxiety.




The manga is far more informative than the movie. The movie seemed to adapt
the first two and the last volumes for its content, without really bothering
to explain anything about who characters were and where they came from.

The [manga](http://akira.wikia.com/wiki/Akira_%28Manga%29), begins with a
nuclear blast that destroy Tokyo and triggers World War III.

> It turns out that it wasn't a bomb, but Akira that caused the blast. Much of
> the plot of the first half of the manga concerns attempts by the military-
> industrial complex to contain the power of Akira. The central plot device
> involved an experiment to create weaponized "psychic" children through
> neuro-surgery and pharmaceutical regimens. Akira was an experiment gone
> dangerously awry and the child is now kept deep underground (under Neo-
> Tokyo's Olympic Stadium) within a sort of giant high-tech freezer.

I believe that there is a taboo on overtly discussing the bomb that speaks to
a mediation between repression and remembrance. The memory of a nuclear attack
on one's own nation is a bit too vivid of a tragedy for many to face directly.
The author makes very good use of allegories to present a nuclear holocaust
through a _shounen_ type of juvenile and imaginative storytelling. This way, a
Japanese reader might be able to be drawn into a subject that would otherwise
provoke repulsion, or at least unease and anxiety.

