Katsuhiro Otomo grew up in Miyagi, Japan, with a childhood obsession that shaped everything that followed: American cinema. Getting to a movie theater meant hours of travel, but he made the trip anyway. He moved to Tokyo in 1973 and immediately began his manga career that same year, starting with "Jyu-sei" (a comic adaptation of Mérimée's "Mateo Falcone"), then regularly contributing to magazine Action.
His early work was solid, but "Fireball" in 1979 marked the real turning point—a groundbreaking series that basically rewired how manga could be done. That's when Otomo's trademark sci-fi bent really emerged. By 1980, "Domu" was a massive hit and snagged Japan's Science Fiction Grand Prix Award. Then came "Akira" in 1982, serialized in Young magazine, and everything changed. It became the work he's best known for: an epic, sprawling series that won countless awards and is widely considered one of the greatest pieces of graphic fiction ever made. The series found just as passionate an audience in the West.
Otomo's influences are pretty clear if you know where to look—he's cited James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause" and Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" as major touchstones.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
