I wanted to revive a Japan like the one I grew up in after the Second World War, with a government in difficulty, a world being rebuilt, external political pressures, an uncertain future and a gang of kids left to fend for themselves who cheat boredom by racing on motorbikes.
-- Katsuhiro Otomo, director of Akira
1960s Japan had a rise of leftist movements, much like the United States, but the beginning of the end involved a shocking incident in 1972.
The United Red Army had only been formed the year before (a merger of two earlier groups) and intended to use whatever means necessary to facilitate the rise of communism in Japan. From the start they were comfortable with violence, including against their own members (12 were deemed not committed enough to the cause and murdered).
In February 1972, police managed to locate the organization's hideout, and five members escaped to a lodge at Mount Asana and took the wife of the lodge-keeper hostage. There was a nine-day standoff, a considerable amount of it being broadcast on TV. On the tenth day the police (assisted by a wrecking ball and tear gas) did an eight-hour assault where two policemen were killed in the ensuing gun battle. (The members of the group were captured alive, and the hostage was rescued.)
Nearly the entirety of Japan watched it happen on television in a broadcast that lasted more than 10 hours. Between 6 and 7 pm, when the hostage was rescued and URA members arrested, the audience share reached 89.7%.
[In the 1970s] there were so many interesting people… Student demonstrations, bikers, political movements, gangsters, homeless youth... All part of the Tokyo scene that surrounded me. In Akira, I projected these elements into the future, as science-fiction.
It was in this environment, one year later, that Katsuhiro Otomo graduated high school from the small city of Tome and arrived in Tokyo, and published his first work that same year (a manga adaptation of a 19th century French short story). After starting in science fiction in 1979 and working on the acclaimed Dōmu from 1980 to 1981, he embarked on Akira in 1982.
The year is important for two reasons:
1.) The economy of Japan was picking up, and, despite a weak yen starting in 1985, the miracle bubble of the 1980s allowed for funding an expensive project
and
2.) Neo-Tokyo of the futuristic year 2019, was, in a sense, real Tokyo -- the decade Katsuhiro Otomo just lived through, combined with the post-WWII he originally grew up in.
Kaneda: I was just wondering if you wanted to grab some tea or something over there. I figured we could have a nice long chat about that "revolution" deal.
In Akira, Tokyo is devastated by an explosion in 1988, setting off WWIII; 31 years after, the action picks up in Neo-Tokyo where biker gangs clash with Kaneda (who leads one such gang) and member Tetsuo. Tetsuo has a close encounter with a psychic who escaped a government laboratory (Takashi). The government picks up both Takashi and Tetsuo and find Tetsuo starting to gain similar -- and even more powerful -- psychic powers. Kaneda works with terrorists to break out Tetsuo, but find Tetsuo has used his new abilities to break himself out, and the search is on for Akira, a psychic who supposedly caused the original explosion in 1988.
The manga (first appearing in December 1982 in Young Magazine) was an immediate success, eventually leading to an offer a few years later to turn the series into animation (the manga wasn't even finished yet and wouldn't be completed until after the movie was released). The production was notably ambitious; more money spent than any prior Japanese animated product; The Washington Post at the time claimed over one billion yen (about $10 million US at the time) but the actual cost was likely half that. This was far more than any single company could handle, and the trio of publisher (Kodansha) distributor (Toho) and studio (TMS) jointly funded the project as the Akira Committee.
The financial investment allowed for an animator team of 68 people and for full animation at frame rates of 12 and 24. By contrast, the standard way — set all the way back in the early 1960s with Tezuka Osamu and Astro Boy — had “limited motions" used in order to streamline cost. For example, in this scene from episode one, the professor manages to turn 180 degrees towards Astro Boy and extend his arms fully with only two changes of art (on Youtube, the "," and "." keys let you step frame-by-frame if you want to study it). Compare with this scene during the famous bike scene in Akira where a bystander -- absolutely incidental to the action and only seen for a moment -- turns his head slowly frame by frame.
Audio was recorded before faces were animated, so there was genuine lip synch, another novelty. Computers were used to a limited extent, including calculating trajectories, but every frame was otherwise hand-drawn.
... the very first animated film with a genuinely novelistic density of incident and character ...
-- UK Film Bulletin Monthly
The hugely ambitious art and technical leaps Akira made -- and Katsuhiro Otomo's skill at making a plot resonant with real events -- led it to be at the top of the Japanese box office the year it was released (1988) beating out not only animation heavyweights like Grave of the Fireflies but also the Japanese release of Return of the Jedi.
Akira's worldwide distribution was not a done deal; aside from some limited releases, Western anime wasn't yet a thing. Streamline Pictures in 1989 (who earlier in the same year released Laputa: Castle in the Sky) went with a slow rollout. Akira premiered in the US on Christmas, 1989 (a 2 1/2 week run at The Biograph in Washington, D.C.) and then it briefly showed other places leading up a NYC premier in October 1990 which Katsuhiro Otomo himself attended. A home video release came in December, and ended up being -- for some video stores -- the only Japanese animation movie they carried for a long time.
The UK's first showing was in January 1991 at the London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in January 1991. Laurence Guinness of Island Records was there and managed to license the video for a home release, leading to the UK's anime boom as adults fretted (as they often do) about the fragile minds of teens.
Worldwide spread of Akira continued to such an extent that in 1993, the Japanese critic Ueno Toshiya spotted it in a most unusual place. He was in Sarajevo, already bombed to shreds into what was to be the second year of a four-year siege, and found a wall with three panels. The first had Mao Zedong with Mickey Mouse Ears, the second had a revolution slogan (he's not specific but it was probably "for everyone, everything. for us, nothing." from the Zapatistas) and on the third, Kaneda, gang leader in the world of Akira, saying "So it's begun!"
...
The information on the URA broadcast is from the NHK's own website. I also referred to this Empire interview and this article from The Japan Times.
Freiberg, F. (2013). Akira and the postnuclear sublime. In Hibakusha Cinema (pp. 103-114). Routledge.
Hughes, D. (2012). Comic Book Movies. United Kingdom: Virgin.
Napier, S. J. (2016). Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. United States: St. Martin's Publishing Group.