ZeRaTuL

In 1993 the Japanese critic Ueno Toshiya made a visit to the city of Sarajevo in war-torn Serbia. Wandering through the bombed-out city, he encountered an unexpected sight. In the middle of the old city was a crumbling wall with three panels. On the first was drawn a picture of Mao Zedong with Mickey Mouse ears; the second had a slogan for the Chiappas liberation group, the Zapatistas, emblazoned on it. But when he came to the third he was “at a loss for words. Incredibly, it was a large panel of a scene from Otomo Katsuhiro's Akira. Against the crumbling walls of the collapsing group of buildings, that 'mighty juvenile delinquent' Kaneda was saying 'So it's begun!'