Akira 35th Anniversary Box Set

Product Information

The story decides to focus a bit too much on too many characters, making the important moments for the ones who really matter hit way less. The positive and weirdly nationalist ending is also very hard to believe and take serious. This particular collection is a high-quality reprint of the work, all collected in six beautiful hardcover volumes and is bundled together with the hardcover Akira Club art book and an exclusive pill patch. Each hardcover book has a revised translation, the original right-to-left reading format, new lettering, and Otomo's original hand-drawn sound effects for that extra visual punch.

A young executive hunts down his father’s killer in director Akira Kurosawa’s scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan. Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low ( Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society. Kurosawa’s effortless debut is based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita about the rivalry between judo and jujitsu. Starring Susumu Fujita as the title character, Sanshiro Sugata is a thrilling martial arts action tale, but it’s also a moving story of moral education that’s quintessential Kurosawa. Akira 35th Anniversary Edition features story and art by Katsuhiro Otomo. This edition contains an all-new, complete 35th anniversary six volume hardcover box set, with the original Japanese art and right-to-left reading format, plus a hardcover Akira Club art book and an exclusive patch with the iconic pill design.

So what makes this box set so special?

There are plenty of elements in the manga that stand out to me, and it has to do with how much we get to know the characters from the movie on a whole new level. Of course, I wouldn’t have minded if the movie had an extra half hour of material, but I also wouldn’t have minded an extra 2 hours. I’m actually glad we get cut off at 2 hours. What I will argue is that the manga and the movie are the same stories taking place in different universes. They intersect in some areas but are wildly different in others. I love the movie with every fiber of my being, but the manga makes us care about these characters even more and we understand their drive in this story much better. Kei and Lady Miyako are central characters here (maybe more than Kaneda) and only serve to add richness to the conflict with Tetsuo. And that’s just scratching the surface. The stakes are just as high here, but there’s more humanity to the story. The character of Akira itself is much more tragic, even though, again, its not quite clear what Akira is, what the capsules are or what they’re supposed to be doing, how Tetsuo fits into all this, or what even happens when these raptures occur. But that doesn’t matter because the rest of the story is pretty grounded in the sense that everyone is frustrated that they don’t understand what’s going on but that there’s one thing that needs to be done. We’re on board for this madness. Immediately after finishing the film adaptation of Akira I knew I wanted to dive into the source material and glean what I could glean to learn more about such an incredible film. If you’re a big fan of the movie adaption of Akira but have never dipped your toes into the source material, you owe it to yourself to read it. Even though the Akira anime was written and directed by Otomo, it only covers about 30% of the manga, at best. It’s almost like reading a different work that just happens to share the same characters and setting. A testament to the goodness of humankind, Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard ( Akahige) chronicles the tumultuous relationship between an arrogant young doctor and a compassionate clinic director. Toshiro Mifune, in his last role for Kurosawa, gives a powerhouse performance as the dignified yet empathic director who guides his pupil to maturity, teaching the embittered intern to appreciate the lives of his destitute patients. Perfectly capturing the look and feel of 19th-century Japan, Kurosawa weaves a fascinating tapestry of time, place, and emotion.

Breathtaking in scope, and utterly fascinating. As a long time fan of the film I finally broke down and bought this boxed set so I could read the source material. Someone wrote in a review I read that the movie is more of an introduction to the story in the books, and boy were they right about that. There is so much more to this story than the movie ever touched on. The families of the victims are baffled. The police investigating the deaths don't know what to make of it all, but as they follow the bizarre trail of clues, they get closer to a killer they're incapable of stopping. But when a little girl moves in with her family, the old man is suddenly confronted by someone determined to stop his malevolent games, a child with powers that might exceed his own. The town-sized apartment complex becomes a battlefield between two psychic juggernauts, and the old man's malicious games unleash a storm of telekinetic fury that threatens to kill hundreds of innocent people.A vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood, directed by Akira Kurosawa, sets Shakespeare’s definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. As a hardened warrior who rises savagely to power, Toshiro Mifune gives a remarkable, animalistic performance, as does Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife. Throne of Blood fuses classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience. As someone who owns multiple versions of the series (did I mention I’m a huge fan?), this is the definitive version of the manga. Each volume is now housed in a sturdy hardcover and, unlike previous English printings, now reads in the traditional right-to-left. The manga also retains the original hand-drawn sound effects and is printed on high-quality paper, so Otomo’s detailed art is incredibly crisp. Akirahas never looked better.

On a Technical Note: While I prefer the original right-to-left orientation of the 35th Anniversary box-set, Kodansha is still using the Dark Horse translation that appeared before Japanese formatting surprised the hell out of US publishers by catching on. It's only as big a deal as you make it, in my opinion; but if you can't stand the R-to-L format, and don't give a shit about 'preserving the artist's original vision', or whatever (does that sound right?), you can still find the Western oriented format in print, for a while, anyway. One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Seven Samurai ( Shichinin no samurai) tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This three-hour ride from Akira Kurosawa—featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura—seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action, into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope. An all-new, complete 35th anniversary hardcover box set of one of the most acclaimed and influential comics of all time, with the original Japanese art and right-to-left reading format for the first time! The science fiction epic that changed anime and manga forever is presented in six beautiful hardcover volumes, plus the hardcover Akira Club art book and an exclusive patch with the iconic pill design. Absolutely incredible! An astounding collection of one of the most important works in comics ever. This anniversary box set is nothing short of beautiful. Every volume in a hardcover edition - I've never seen a set this well done before. The publisher has outdone itself with this set.

Wait, what is Akira about?

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of The Huge Sandman Box Set Being Over 50% Off So what makes this box set so special? Image: Kodansha Also, the collected version of the printed story was completed two years after the movie, allowing the reader and viewer to experience the (similar) stories to a different effect. Marvel at the beauty that is Akira. There’s really not much I can say about the series that hasn’t already been said before, but what I will add is that, if you’re a fan of the movie and want to dive deeper into this world, then the manga is a must. Notice I didn’t say that the manga will help you understand what’s going on in this story, because it’s still pretty confusing, but there’s something to be said about a story that barely explains itself, but still manages to engage the reader to such a degree. An all-new, complete 35th anniversary hardcover box set of one of the most acclaimed and influential comics of all time, with the original Japanese art and right-to-left reading format for the first time! This portrait of female volunteer workers at an optics plant during World War II, shot on location at the Nippon Kogaku factory, was created with a patriotic agenda. Yet thanks to Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking semidocumentary approach, The Most Beautiful is a revealing look at Japanese women of the era and anticipates the aesthetics of Japanese cinema’s postwar social realism.