In 2004 Kodansha published a deluxe anniversary edition of Katushiro Otomo's Akira in Japan. I was asked to write an Afterword to the last volume. It appears here in English for the first time.

A New Type of Bomb…

When I was eight years old, my uncle came back from a business trip to Japan. He brought me a Sony Walkman. I only had one tape to play in it. But it felt like a gift from the future. Japan was cool. As Takakura Ken told Michael Douglas in Black Rain: "We make the machines." Sony, Sharp, Matsushita, Toyota - these names were the new magic. They were arcane, their meaning unknown, but yuppies knew that if something was going to be reliable and ahead of its time, it was going to come from Japan.

This affected 1980s science fiction with a fashion for Japanesquerie. Japanese corporations were the new bad-guys. In the Alien movies, the formerly anonymous "Company" suddenly gained the name "Weyland-Yutani," an amalgam of Anglo-Saxon imperialism and Japanese branding. At the forefront of the cyberpunk movement, William Gibson's Neuromancer and Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix posited an Asian future that looked like Tokyo. They had never been there, so they guessed, and they imagined something out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. And then Akira arrived and proved them right.

Akira wasn't the first manga to reach the US. It was preceded by works that kept Japan safely in the samurai past - Lone Wolf and Cub and Kamui Gaiden. But when Akira hit the US in the 1980s, American readers saw it as a glimpse of the Pacific Rim future. Here was a sprawling Asian super-city, complete with kanji and cool technology, and now everyone spoke English, too!

Many readers misinterpreted Akira as a Japanese Blade Runner, unaware that its roots were much older than that. It owed less to cyberpunk sensibilities than it did to the young Otomo Katsuhiro's perspective on 1960s scandals and counter-culture - corrupt politicians, rioting students, mad biker gangs and corporate intrigue. Otomo depicts a Tokyo that is literally without a heart - the huge crater that began WW3 sits at its centre, like the festering swamp in another "post-war" movie, Kurosawa Akira's Drunken Angel. The scenes of urban strife were also rooted in the past, in the anti-American protests that tore Tokyo apart in Otomo's youth. Even the Olympic stadium is a historical marker - Tokyo hosted the games in 1964. But nobody realised that in America.

Instead, for many it was their first encounter with Japan itself, and with Japanese comics - adult storylines, pages of silence and slow-motion, and what was then a uniquely foreign perspective. English-language comics were growing up, too, with material like Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Sandman, but here was a Japanese work that showed Japan was still ahead, still living in the future.

Of course, as Otomo wrote himself in his original afterword to Akira (omitted from the Dark Horse compilation edition I have here), he was merely the inheritor of a long tradition, an acolyte of Tezuka Osamu. Frederik Schodt's landmark book Manga Manga reached the US at roughly the same time, and together, these early works brought manga to America. Akira opened the floodgates for more manga in the US, and over the 15 years that have followed, America has discovered Japanese comics culture in its myriad forms.

Akira also spearheaded anime in the western world, with Otomo's adaptation remaining one of the most popular and recognisable Japanese animated films worldwide. Akira became, quite literally, the catalyst for taking manga and anime abroad. Industry insiders talk of two "Akira Barriers". The first is that in order to create a new market for anime in a new territory you have to lead with Akira. It's the manga that makes people want more. It's the film that creates the media attention, a genuine movie that belongs on the big screen. Lead with Akira, and a new market is yours, be it Scandinavia, or the UK, or Malaysia…

There is another Akira Barrier, and it is not so benign. The problem is that once you hit a foreign market with Akira, nothing quite compares. Otomo's perfectionism and attention to detail created a landmark anime and manga, each helping to promote the other, but readers and viewers clamored for more of the same. But few other anime have comparable budgets. Few other manga have quite the impact - it is only possible to be a pioneer once.

Akira's impact was so powerful that for a while it overwhelmed the popular consciousness of the comics world. Akira is the reason that so many American readers still think "manga" means science fiction, and "anime" means high-tech combat in a city of the future. In the aftermath of Akira, the English-speaking world got Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis… It was only when the river of sci-fi began to run dry that publishers turned to other genres.

Now, of course, a far broader range of manga and anime are available in English translation, with varying degrees of success. But Akira continues to dominate the market in many territories. Otomo can rest easy with the knowledge that his initial investment of time and energy is truly paying off now. Other manga and anime may fade from public view and go out of print, but Akira is now reaching a new audience who were not even born when it was first published. As they say at the end of the manga that bears his name, "Akira is still alive."

Jonathan Clements is the co-author of the Anime Encyclopedia.