Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires incredible telekinetic abilities after a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo.

The soundtrack, which draws heavily from traditional Indonesian gamelan and Japanese noh music, was composed by Shōji Yamashiro and performed by Geinoh Yamashirogumi.

[3][12][13] In 2019, following a world war triggered by the sudden destruction of Tokyo on July 16, 1988, Neo-Tokyo is plagued by corruption, anti-government protests, terrorism, and gang violence.

Kaneda's best friend, Tetsuo Shima, inadvertently crashes his motorcycle into Takashi, an esper who escaped from a government laboratory with the aid of a resistance organization.

Assisted by fellow esper Masaru, Japan Self-Defense Forces Colonel Shikishima recaptures Takashi, has Tetsuo hospitalized, and arrests the Capsules.

At a secret government facility, Shikishima and his head of research, Doctor Ōnishi, discover that Tetsuo possesses powerful psychic abilities similar to Akira, the esper responsible for Tokyo's 1988 destruction.

The resistance group infiltrates the hospital, and Kiyoko draws Kei and Kaneda into Shikishima and the espers' futile attempts to stop Tetsuo.

The espers teleport Shikishima to a safe distance as the singularity destroys Neo-Tokyo in a mirror of Tokyo's previous destruction, and they agree to rescue Kaneda, knowing they will not return to this dimension as a result.

Mourning Tetsuo's loss, Kaneda discovers that Kei and Kai have survived, and they ride off into the ruins while Shikishima watches the sunrise.

At an unspecified plane of reality, Tetsuo introduces himself and triggers the creation of a universe, finally transcending the limitations of human existence.

[18] He agreed to an anime film adaptation of the series on the grounds that he retained creative control of the project – this insistence was based on his experiences working on Harmagedon.

The group's assembly was necessitated by the unconventionally high starting budget of around ¥500,000,000, intended to achieve the desired epic standard equal to Otomo's over 2,000-page manga tale.

Japan Inc. and the cooperative companies for computer graphics, Sumisho Electronic Systems, Inc. and Wavefront Technologies), primarily to animate the pattern indicator used by Doctor Ōnishi, but it was additionally used to plot the paths of falling objects, model parallax effects on backgrounds, and tweak lighting and lens flares.

[53] Electric Media produced an English dub of the film in 1989 that was written by L. Michael Haller and directed by Sheldon Renan and Wally Burr.

[54][55][56][57] The English version saw limited release by Streamline Pictures in North American theaters on December 25, 1989, and grossed about $2.2 million in the United States.

After Pioneer Entertainment acquired the rights to the film, a new English dub was produced by Animaze and directed by Kevin Seymour in 2001 for the DVD release to obtain THX certification.

[60][61][62][63] Pioneer re-released the film with the new dub in select theaters from March through December 2001, making it the 20th digital cinema release in North America.

[64] The restored 4K version was shown in North American movie theaters on September 24, 2020, and for multiple days in select IMAX auditoriums and other cinemas worldwide.

"[89] Variety praises aspects of the film "from the imaginative and detailed design of tomorrow to the booming Dolby effects on the soundtrack" but criticizes the "slight stiffness in the drawing of human movement".

[90] Chicago Tribune's Dave Kehr commends Otomo's "excellent animation-specific ideas: Vehicles leave little color trails as they roar through the night, and there are a number of dream sequences that make nice use of the medium's ability to confound scale and distort perspective".

[94] Janet Maslin of The New York Times commends Otomo's artwork, stating "the drawings of Neo-Tokyo by night are so intricately detailed that all the individual windows of huge skyscrapers appear distinct.

[95] Richard Harrison of The Washington Post comments on the pace of the film, stating that the author "has condensed the narrative sprawl of the comics to provide coherence, though there's a bit of "Back to the Future Part II" incompleteness to the story.

[4] Phelim O'Neill of the Guardian draws a parallel on Akira's influence on the science-fiction genre to Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[130] Rob Garratt of South China Morning Post calls Akira one of "the most influential sci-fi visions ever realised" on film, comparable to the influence of Blade Runner.

[136] Manga author Masashi Kishimoto, for example, recalls becoming fascinated with the way the poster was made and wished to imitate the series' creator Katsuhiro Otomo's style.

[12][3] It inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk works, including manga and anime series such as Ghost in the Shell, Battle Angel Alita, Cowboy Bebop, Devilman Crybaby, Garo: Vanishing Line, Serial Experiments Lain,[11] and Elfen Lied,[139] live-action Japanese films such as Tetsuo: The Iron Man,[140] and video games such as Hideo Kojima's Snatcher[141] and Metal Gear Solid,[11] and Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII.

[142] Outside of Japan, Akira has been cited as a major influence on Hollywood films such as The Matrix,[143] Dark City,[144] Kill Bill,[145] Chronicle,[146] Looper,[147] The Dark Knight,[148] Midnight Special, Inception,[3] Godzilla,[149] Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,[150] and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,[151] television shows such as Astronaut, Batman Beyond and Stranger Things,[139] and video games such as Core Design's Switchblade,[152] Valve's Half-Life series,[153][154] and Dontnod Entertainment's Remember Me.

[158] Kanye West cited Akira as a major influence on his work,[158] and he paid homage to the film in the "Stronger" (2007) music video.

When Tokyo was chosen to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 2013 bidding process, several commentators claimed that Akira predicted the future event.

(147 days before the event) led to a social media trend calling for the cancellation of the 2020 Olympics, where it topped Twitter topics in Japan.