Without "Akira" there would be no "Cool Japan."
There's no denying that for many non-Japanese back in early 1990s. The anime adaptation of the manga "Akira" was for them the first taste of a drug that ultimately drove the addicted to seek more highs like it, and it caused a pandemic of interest in Japanese pop culture that still exists today.
No wonder then, that when Katsuhiro Otomo announced he would be displaying the genga (original drawings) of every single page of his six-volume masterpiece "Akira," the twitterverse lit up like synapses sparking in a neural network — transmitting the news to diehard manga fans in Japan and the world over.