Some of us may remember Akira, a 1988 Japanese anime film version by Katsuhiro Otomo, which was based on his original manga comic story. The story is about characters in post-nuclear war 2019 Tokyo, where Neo-Tokyo is filled with protestors, teenage bikers, soldiers and street gangs.

Central character Kaneda, a biker who attends reform school battles with his Capsule Motorcycle Club against the Clown bike gang and rides a really cool (how can he afford it!?) bike which has been the subject of the manga, anime and several attempts to produce 1:1 scale Akira-influenced bikes. Bandai also made a highly detailed model, which I recently acquired (and will review here later). McFarlane Toys had earlier made a plastic version whereas the Bandai version seems to have a metal subframe and lots of options to remove and add on bodywork.

In the anime, the sound of the Kaneda bike was produced by mixing the sound of a 1929 Harley-Davidson with the sound of a jet engine! The design was supposedly by a former Honda R&D engineer who left Honda to work for White House, a Japanese custom bike company. The manga showed the Kaneda bike with a Honda logo whereas the anime had a (sort of) BMW logo.

The Kaneda bike has become something of a motorcycling icon, despite being a work of fiction! Thousands of moped riders in Malaysia and elsewhere proudly placed ‘Akira’ stickers on their helmets, and the bike has embedded itself in the psyche of bikers everywhere. In addition to the manga, anime, toys and DIY replicas, an upcoming live action movie is in the works. More on that later.

バイカーブードゥー

Some of us may remember Akira, a 1988 Japanese anime film version by Katsuhiro Otomo, which was based on his original manga comic story. The story is about characters in post-nuclear war 2019 Tokyo, where Neo-Tokyo is filled with protestors, teenage bikers, soldiers and street gangs.

Central character Kaneda, a biker who attends reform school battles with his Capsule Motorcycle Club against the Clown bike gang and rides a really cool (how can he afford it!?) bike which has been the subject of the manga, anime and several attempts to produce 1:1 scale Akira-influenced bikes. Bandai also made a highly detailed model, which I recently acquired (and will review here later). McFarlane Toys had earlier made a plastic version whereas the Bandai version seems to have a metal subframe and lots of options to remove and add on bodywork.

In the anime, the sound of the Kaneda bike was produced by mixing the sound of a 1929 Harley-Davidson with the sound of a jet engine! The design was supposedly by a former Honda R&D engineer who left Honda to work for White House, a Japanese custom bike company. The manga showed the Kaneda bike with a Honda logo whereas the anime had a (sort of) BMW logo.

The Kaneda bike has become something of a motorcycling icon, despite being a work of fiction! Thousands of moped riders in Malaysia and elsewhere proudly placed ‘Akira’ stickers on their helmets, and the bike has embedded itself in the psyche of bikers everywhere. In addition to the manga, anime, toys and DIY replicas, an upcoming live action movie is in the works. More on that later.

バイカーブードゥー