Akira, Volume 1 Book

I first watched the anime adaptation of Akira when I was an eight or nine years old kid (despite the gruesome images and the violence, the anime was still aired in daytime 'family hours' during summer holiday back then, shocking) and the whole thing really scared the shit out of me. I mean, what eight years old kid has the strong-enough mentality to handle the image of little children who look like elderly, evil looking massive teddy bear, and a teenager turns into a mother fucking monster!?

I only started to appreciate this Sci-Fi masterpiece when finally I mustered up enough courage to overcome my childhood trauma and watched the anime again when I went to college.

Decades later, I am now reading the manga version of Akira, I am impressed by Katsuhiro Otomo's realistic and detailed artwork, his gloomy worldview and his creativity! I'm speechless!

I'm pleasantly surprised by how the manga is different from the anime movie, and I really couldn't put the book down, off I go to read the next volume!

Edited@08/10/2020:

I re-read Akira because real life and the society situations have become unbearable. In this re-read, I can relate to the members of the teenage biker gang and their attitude: even before they were born, decisions had been made by adults who only care about their own interests, their world had been broken up and fucked up by forces which are entirely out of their control, and there is no way out for them outside of being trapped in a city which only viewed them as disposable losers. So what did those teens do? They rebelled, they broke things up randomly, they disturbed the peace and the order of the society, that makes so much sense.