Akira

Akira is set in Neo-Tokyo, a sprawl built on the ruins of a city destroyed by a mysterious blast. Tetsuo, a member of a teenage biker gang, comes into psychic powers the government has spent decades trying to weaponize, and he cannot control what they do to him. Katsuhiro Otomo serialized it from 1982 to 1990 across six large volumes, and it became one of the first manga translated in full for English readers. The drawing is staggering: dense, precise mechanical detail, real urban scale, and explosions rendered with a physical force few artists match. It is loud, paranoid, and visionary science fiction about power that outgrows the people who hold it.